I sat too long (I think) with the engine off and the car radio on in a 2000 Honda Civic. When I went to turn the engine on I got a battery-out sounding grinding. It would not tern over.
I thought I’d drained the battery so I called AAA and went into a store. After about a half an hour I returned to the car, tried it again and the engine turned over. I rode it around a bit and later on in the day it still works seemingly no problem.
Is it possible that this was a battery problem? Could it turn over, essentially recharge itself, just by sitting?
Well, batteries don’t recharge by themselves but I’ve the same thing happen to me before. Perhaps the battery warmed up a little somehow (or the cables cooled down) and it had just enough juice to turn the engine over.
It probably was a battery. With your initial attempt to start it, the battery warmed up a bit. It held some of that heat, with more probably coming from outside. Then it had enough oomp to start the car. Once you had it running the charging system quickly added more music to the battery.
Dan
Yeah HANDY I had the radio on. Turned it off when it didn’t go initially, and it still would not go with the radio now off. After the walk away, I made sure it was off from the start.
Is it possible that I made some kind of “dead spot” on the battery by radio listening and by not fooling with it a while, it let me tap into a different area of the Battery (or is this just insane- as I AM talking out my behind here)?
That happens to me all the time. I don’t have a “lights on” alarm on my Civic, so I’ve let the batter run down 20 times (seriously). Typically the car won’t start, I just get the clicking of the solenoid.
If I wait for 15 minutes there is more juice, and sometimes enough to start the car. The trouble is that the battery is never quite as good afterwards.
You didn’t make a “dead spot” on the battery. Batteries can however “recover” a little once they are discharged.
A hot brick will do the same thing. Hose it down and make it cool, then let it sit for a while, and when you come back it will have warmed back up a bit.
Capacitors (electrical devices used typically as filters) do the same thing. It’s not uncommon to completely discharge one, then find a little charge back on it a few hours later.
Yeah, happens with my flashlights. They dim then I turn them off & then on & they work again. For a bit anyway
BTW, you can get a portable battery from harborfreight.com made by century, for about $50 (in clearance) that you can keep in your car trunk to restart if needed. They come with cables & sometimes a ac or dc jack.
I want to jump to criticize the “hot brick” example. From a physics standpoint, there is absolutely no parallel, and the example itself, the way it’s described, is totally bogus – the brick loses heat to the water from its surface relatively rapidly, but the transfer of heat from the core of the brick to the surface takes place more slowly than at the water/brick interface – but I’m torn because I like the simplicity and beauty of the comparison.
I had a problem like this once. I would run my car and it would be fine, but if I turned the car off, I would have to wait for about an hour before it would start again. I finally changed the battery and it worked fine ever after.
