OT: Car won't start. Battery? Starter?

[spearmint]

Rule of Batteries; if you buy an 48 month battery on the 1st of the 49th it will be dead. I buy cheapest new battery I can get because I do not want to bet on keeping a car for long and have proved this rule again and again.

Check the battery before you waste money. Doesn't the battery have two posts?

[bangman]

Battery a good bet.

Fuel pump got me once. That was a pain.

[rgG]

Costco has good prices on batteries. We just bought one there on Sunday for my husband's car. Be sure to rough up the terminal posts with sandpaper before putting the clamps back on. I didn't at first and it wasn't making a good enough connection to start the car. As soon as I took the sandpaper to the terminals and reconnected them it fired right up.

[davester]

If it was the battery or corroded battery terminals, the interior lights would dim when the clickety click sound occurred. If they are unaffected then it is another problem. It could be a bad engine ground, or bad starter connections but then the starter would have slowed down. The clickety click sound is almost certainly the solenoid. So, you probably have a bad solenoid.

[Dennis S]

Heck, the battery said "Maintenance Free", but I popped off 2 caps on the top and it needs water, I think. I looked in one side and could barely see water way at the bottom of the tubes. I'll get some distilled water for it tomorrow and scrub the posts.

[Racer X]

Good thinking Dennis.

maintenance free usually means you can't maintain them, not that they don't need it. distilled water to above the plates, but not to the top of the battery. the plates just need to be submerged. Also, charge it for a bit with a battery charger before using it.

there may be excessive lead sulfate built up on the plates in those 2 cells. The alternator in the car then couldn't overcome the internal electrical resistance in those two cells and not charge properly.

At the auto parts store I managed, I have taken batteries that had been abused by overcharging and run dry and became heavily sulphated. I would refill some and put on a charger. 0 charge current on the ammeter on the charger. after a while 1 or 2 amps was barely flowing, after another few hours it would be charging at full rate.

I and my friends never paid for batteries while I worked there. I also kept the local Sea Scout fleet supplied with batteries that way too.

[Dennis S]

More than 2 cells. I meant I took one cap off, which had 3 cells underneath it, which were all very low. I didn't look under the other cap.

Do I need to use a charger, which I don't have, or can I just crank it up and drive it after I add the water?

[davester]

I don't know why you're wasting time and money on the battery. There's nothing in your discussion to indicate that there is anything wrong with it and it might be good for several more years yet. Take it in and get a free battery test before wasting any money buying an unneeded battery. Taking a shotgun approach and replacing parts willy nilly NEVER works in my experience.

On the other hand, the fact that you had to move the neg terminal to the frame to get it to start indicates that you have a bad ground wire somewhere, most likely an engine/body ground. This will need to be replaced or you are going to run into more trouble down the road.

[Dennis S]

"
On the other hand, the fact that you had to move the neg terminal to the frame to get it to start indicates that you have a bad ground wire somewhere, most likely an engine/body ground."

That makes sense, although the metal that didn't work I found had rubber underneath it to keep it off the radiator.

I'm not buying a new battery. I'm going to add distilled water to the cells.