My car wouldn’t start on Friday and still would not after attempting to jump it for 10-15 minutes. The next day, I had a tow truck out there to tow it to a mechanic. He tried starting it and to my surprise, it started up right away with no trouble. I was able to use it yesterday, successfully starting it several times while doing errands. Today, my son was attempting to start it and the same thing occurred. I heard no noise from the starter motor. We haven’t replaced the battery since we’ve owned it, approximately 2 years. Does the behavior I described sound like a bad battery?
This car is a 2003 Mazda Protege with a manual transmission and you’re required to press in the clutch before the ignition will work. Is it also possible that whatever switch the clutch pedal activates is somehow intermittently not working?
If it was the clutch switch you’d find the rest of the electrics working; headlights fully bright, etc.
Batteries aren’t as cheap as they once were, so replacing it just in case might be sorta spendy depending on what your idea of “spendy” is. But it’s certainly the lowest effort fix.
I do have a small battery tester from Harbor Freight, and it was showing that the battery was good. That’s when I gave up on jumping it the first time. I haven’t checked today. I don’t know how much faith to put into this tester. Another fact to add is that there is a fair amount of corrosion on the terminals. Does this new information change anything?
Heavy corrosion amounts to effectively weakening the battery. Remove the terminals, clean off the corrosion with a suitable battery terminal brush and reassemble and your battery may well gain a new lease on life. A temporary lease, but good for some more time at least.
No noise at all may be telling. If you don’t hear the starter solenoid click the problem probably isn’t the battery.
Lead acid batteries are evil things. Failure with age usually manifests on a cold morning. But they can have a range of other problems. Corrosion on the terminals is always worth addressing. Low acid levels are a trap. If it isn’t a true maintenance free battery this needs checking. I was once sold a battery that for all the world appeared to be a maintenance free design. No visible access on the top. So even at services it was never checked. Turned out that if you took all the mounting brackets and cover off, you could see where access to the cells could be done. The place that sold me the battery took responsibility for that.
Proper battery testers test the cold cranking capability. Starters need to supply a huge current for a short time. This requires a tester designed for the purpose, such as linked to above. Just measuring the off load voltage can only diagnose some forms of totally failed battery. It can’t tell you if it is useless for purpose. (It might say it is feeling much better.)
Well technically it could be the battery, if it is fully drained and dead. That’s not likely but it’s still a possibility so don’t rule that out yet based on just that symptom.
Take a hammer to that durned thing! No, seriously, if it is the starter or solenoid that is bad, tapping it with a hammer may wiggle the faulty/loose bit so that it will make a proper connection. If the battery is charged and tapping the starter gets it to start, then you need to see about replacing one of those instead of the battery.
That does, yes.
Disconnect the wires from the battery and clean them and the terminals thoroughly.
Battery terminal grease may provide a better connection.
Make sure the connections are tight and don’t slip round the terminals.
Any auto parts store will usually test your battery for you, with no commitment to immediately buy a battery. Their equipment is usually of pretty reasonable quality (not that the cheapo battery testers are unreliable, but why spend the $50 if you don’t have to?)
So, it turned out to be a bad battery which also happened to be the wrong size for the vehicle (not sure how that happened). The mechanic also replaced a terminal that had cracked. I am still mystified as to why it would not take a jump and then start just fine the next day.
A former car (incidentally, also a Mazda, but a 1985 626) had problems with what turned out to be corrosion on the battery terminals. It would stall, and refuse to start for a few minutes, then ultimately would start and be fine for a while.
This was especially fun the time it happened on I-395 on a Friday evening (main highway out of Washington DC to points south).
Aside from that, every failed battery we have had has been somewhat predictable behavior - hesitating on starting, then being fine, until one time it wouldn’t start and needed to be jumped. It would make that feeble “I think i can, I think I can… oh hell, I can’t” sound each time. Well, until the most recent time, where our 2020 CRV battery died with no warning. The various interior lights came on. The car screamed in warning when we took the key fob inside. But it did not do that heaving attempt to start.
We called AAA, hoping it was just the battery (and the regular battery, not the hybrid battery) but with no hope, due to the odd behavior. Turns out, it WAS the battery; the AAA guy said that they DO sometimes fail suddenly like that. Huge relief, as we were supposed to leave town the next day; he had a replacement battery on the truck and we have not had any issues since then.
The first thing to do when having battery issues is to clean off any corrosion and be sure that the cables and posts that they connect to are clean and bright. They are lead and clean up with just a little brush or sandpaper.
Batteries with good connections should not corrode and they should look clean. Got junk or white powder on the terminals? You already have a bad connection. Just having dirty terminals is a sign of poor connections. There is a little battery tool that fits over the battery terminal with wire brushes inside that will clean the posts on the battery, and also will clean the inside of the connecting cable. Should be one in everyones tool box.
I had a similar problem with a Toyota Tercel many years ago. It wouldn’t start sometimes, but if I waited a bit, it would. When it didn’t start, there was no crank at all, not the weak crank of a dying battery. My mechanic couldn’t reproduce it, so he replaced the solenoid. That didn’t help. Some years after I got rid of the car, I found out the problem was probably a malfunctioning neutral safety switch. So, that’s one thing to consider, especially if the electrical system – other than the starter – is working. Maybe try shifting in and out of park a few times to see if that clears it up.
Lead acid batteries can sometimes fail due to the failure of one of the bridging connections between cells. Just simple mechanical separation of the connection. This is particularly a problem with off roading, and why batteries intended for this use exist.
Not impossible that there was some such failure that was temperature sensitive. Just needed that tiny bit of movement to bridge a crack. OTOH there is a lot of current flowing when it does deliver power. So not a happy answer even if a crack did temporarily close.