Loaded up the car with stuff to take to the storage locker only to discover that it no longer starts. I replaced the battery pretty recently, so I'm guessing this must be an alternator. I'm unhappy about it! I gave the car the finger in my driveway!
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
Alternators are pretty easy to replace dude. Watch a video, grab a couple of wrenches, get a jump start, and then drive to an auto parts store and replace it in the parking lot.
If you mostly drive shorter trips, the battery doesn't get charged enough. Typical issue for both of our cars. Would try charging the battery with one of these, or something equivalent.
mostly saying cuz i also thought i had an alternator issue a bit ago but no the alarm system just drains the battery if you don't go anywhere for a long while
Yeah, that happened to my wife's car at one point before we got rid of it. I drive this thing about once a week, which I'd think would keep it from fully draining, but... yeah, I don't know. I'm going to jump it and see how it goes.
I think @patrickklepek.bsky.social recently ran into this exact scenario. Apparently once a week isn’t nearly enough and you can buy some kind of doohicky that keeps your battery from dying when only driving a handful of times a month 🤷🏻♂️
Yeah, one of those would work. I also disconnect the negative from my battery if I know I’m not driving it for a bit. Also have an in house trickle charger just in case
Yep—you want a trickle charger. You can get one that kicks in automatically or plug it into the wall and let it slowly charger over a day or so. I do the latter. Otherwise brief drives just kill the battery in a year or two.
We have solar powered trickle chargers plugged into the OBD ports of our test cars at work. Works well enough that we almost never need to jump them. Obviously requires the car being parked outside though.
once a week is good for me but it's also really dependent on the draw (you could check with a multimeter) and how far you're going each time you do drive it. a normal sized battery would need a solid hour of running to get a full charge
I’ve replaced my battery under warranty like 4 times in the past couple years because I don’t drive it more than a couple times a week and it dies. I have like a $30 charger from autozone that will get it to start usually.
Driving once a week for how long? It takes ~30-60 minutes of engine run time to offset sitting for a week, lots of factors involved. An engine start and a short drive will actually net discharge your battery. The COVID era caused a lot of chaos on car batteries.
You're probably right, but if you pull that and have the parts store test it and it works, then you may be lucky and just have a bad (but much cheaper) solenoid.
It should still start if the battery is good. Bad alternator would give you issues once the battery drains…which maybe happened if the alternator crapped out, but if the battery has charge you can actually drive for a while
If you can jump it and it runs while driving without dying (you can test by letting the car run in the driveway for a bit), your alternator is likely ok.
Finally, if you get power to everything and the engine just isn't kicking over, it's likely either a cold crank issue (bad battery) or starter.
Comments
I have done this myself. You can do it!
https://no.co/genius5
If you have a multimeter, test the battery and if it's below 12V, then you have a battery problem.
If you put the keys in and get power to your dash, then there's a chance you have something going on in between the battery and starter.
Finally, if you get power to everything and the engine just isn't kicking over, it's likely either a cold crank issue (bad battery) or starter.
You'll probably get much better ideas from literally any mechanic and I may not be perfectly accurate, but let me know where I'm wrong!
Good luck with the car!