I was having a hard time getting my car started in the mornings–I’d have to keep the key turned for several seconds while the engine tried to turn over, and sometimes it wouldn’t start at all on the first try–so I went to have the battery changed.
Driving away from the auto repair shop, the car’s engine seemed to be “lugging,” going at too low a speed for the gear it was in. We made a sudden stop at an intersection on the way home and the engine outright stalled! When I tried to start the car again at home, I had trouble starting it again–but in a new and different way; the engine used to rev at a normal, high speed but not turn over, but now it was sort of slowly coughing for a long time at a low speed and eventually, reluctantly starting.
I won’t have time to take the car back to the shop until next weekend. In the meantime, can someone tell me what’s wrong with it, and what the shop might have done? I don’t really know much about cars, but it seems to me like the problems it’s now having are more transmission-related than battery-related.
I bought a brand-new battery from a department store and replaced my car battery, which had died of old age.
Within a week, my car was completely cutting off while driving – lights would go off, engine would stop, power steering would become stiff, and car would roll to a stop.
I had no idea what was happening, but it was unbelievably dangerous – on a major highway, I would have been rear-ended at once (no lights, power, steering suddenly). Fortunately it happened in a parking lot. It did this a few times in a row (I didn’t want to leave the lot until I figured it out) and then it stopped completely.
I thought maybe there was an electrical short. Perhaps that was why the fiorst battery had died.
I took it to a mechanic. They put in another brand-new battery. That’s all they did – no repairs, nothing. I wouldn’t believe them when they said that had fixed it; finally the customer service team put the mechanic on the phone to explain. He said that HIS place returns batteries in stock to the manufacturer regularly, because they lose their charge sitting on the shelf. The big chain I bought from might not have rotated its battery stock, and the actual battery I’d put in must have been almost totally defunct upon installation. It wouldn’t hold a charge.
That sounded like BS, but it’s been a year and the car has run like a charm with that second new battery, so maybe they were truthful after all.
I may not be understanding the symptoms right, but one thing I’d try is getting a different “brand-new” battery installed and seeing if that makes a difference.
It’s an automatic, Honda Civic VP, 1999, ~100k miles. The tank is full of 87 octane gas, which is what I always use. (From 76, not Sooper Saver Amazing Discount Gas.)
I’m finding the description of symptoms a little confusing, part of which appears to be misused terms. The proper meaning of “turning over” is cranking, which is when the starter makes a ruh-ruh-ruh sound. When the engine actually starts, it is said to run. “Rev” indicates running at an increasing speed. The already running engine revs up (or revs) when you press on the gas pedal.
If I follow correctly, it used to crank at a normal speed but not start right away. If that’s right, a battery replacement was probably not called for. Now with the new battery, it runs poorly, dies at stops, and during starting seems to halfway run for a while before it finally gets to where it will run without the starter being cranked. If that’s right, there’s a performance problem that is not normally associated with the battery.
It is possible that the new battery is faulty (it’s possible for any new part to be faulty – we haven’t achieved absolute perfection in everything), though the symptoms aren’t typical of that. It’s also possible, and more likely, that something else was affected, e.g. a wire or hose might have been disconnected.
I had a very similar experience.
Brand new battery failed to start the car a couple of days afer purchase, turned out they had forgotten to add the distilled water before putting the battery on the shelf.
Replaced with another new one, no more problems.
Sorry, as I said, I don’t know much about cars. Your description is right: it used to crank at a normal speed but not start in a normal amount of time. It now cranks very slowly, runs poorly, and stalled at one stop. None of this happened before I took the car in. If the original problem didn’t sound like a battery issue to you, what would you suspect the problem actually was?
There’s not one thing that leaps to mind as a most likely possibility. Among the suspects are worn spark plugs, weak main relay, weak fuel pump, and restricted injectors. The easiest cheapest thing to try first would be add a bottle of a good fuel system cleaner to the tank (I suggest Techron). If the plugs have more than 30,000 miles on them, they should be replaced. After that, it’s testing time.
Are you in a colder city? Or has it recently gotten colder somewhat in conjunction with the engine taking longer to start? Have you had an actually pretty-cold yet yet that you tried to start it on? I’m not much into Honda’s, But Subaru’s have a flaky coolant temp sensor that people start noticing acting screwy as fall and winter hit, with symptoms that sound kind of like yours. Esentially the car doesn’t know when it’s hot or cold, and therefore the computer doesn’t now how much air to give it, so cold starts are a real bitch.
I had the same problems after a small accident (a motorhome ran into me while I was parked in a parking lot). Hard time starting, “lugging”, stalling and all that. My mechanic said that one of my vacuum tubes was loose, making gas supply to my engine unreliable. Apparently my vacuum canister was also cracked. Has your gas mileage gone down recently? It was about a $100 fix, labor included. It’s worked fine ever since.