Help! Battery died all of a sudden

At a park. Starter strains to turn over them stops after 2 seconds and it just rapidly clicks. Wiper works but won’t go into rapid wipe mode, it just wipes in slowest setting. Lights work but hard to tell how bright cause it’s daytime. Battery terminals were well attached when I bought this $100 battery a year ago. Could be a bad alternator too. 100,000 k miles.

 

Have you tried jump starting it?

 

Lots of short trips?
Got a charger?
Will it jump start?

 

Help is usually reserved for those who are in need of immediate assistance.

Could be a bad battery. Could be a dead or dying alternator. If it died while running, I'd be willing to bet it is the latter.

 

If it's sudden, that can often be loose cables. Give them a jiggle, they should be tight.

 

Could always try push starting it if it's a manual trans, if nothing else works. Just to get to where you can get the battery and alternator tested

 

It says help in the title. Help is not the only word in the title, which you’d be correct in addressing the obvious issue with that type of title.

Keep the concept going but this isn’t an incorrect use of the word help, something people seem to overlook more and more on this forum.

 

Too weird to expect park going people to give me a jump. Push start out of the question. As I stated, I did a pro job attaching this Walmart battery. When I get it going I’ll head to Walmart with my battery receipt.

 

If you have cables, asking for a jump isn't the weirdest request in the world. Just try to find a guy or gal with an older truck -- usually a safe bet that they've been in a similar situation at some point or another. I had to ask a random down-the-block neighbor a few months back when I was on my way to a job interview and my car wouldn't turn over. I think he was a little paranoid to have a stranger talk to him (Covid times and all) but once he saw that I had my own cables and am obviously not some type of con-artist, it really wasn't a big ask. I was on my way in 2 minutes after asking.

 

Ahh. It was my bad for not realizing this was an active situation where help was needed.

 

The gathering of ppl at this park all have vehicles 2018 or newer and probably don’t even know where their hood latch release is located. I have cables but my truck was parked where my cables probably wouldn’t reach their vehicle anyways. Not to mention they might not want a jump possibly messing with their electronics. I wasn’t even going to attempt asking.

After waiting an hour, I got it to turn over. I fell asleep for hours while streaming on my iPhone with the charger connected and it drained the battery. Not gonna let that happen again. My starter has been acting weird for awhile which is why I jumped to the conclusion that the starter finally gave up.

 

The way to check the alternator yourself is once you get it running again, check the voltage with a meter while it's running. Anything less than 13.7 volts while running, and the alternator is going bad and anything less than 13 volts it's completely done. You could also go to autozone or something and ask them to do a battery test, but it would be rude to do so and not buy anything afterwards if either the battery or alternator was bad.

 

First thing would have been Check the voltage A cheap Multimeter lives in all my vehicles.

Something is wrong if a phone charger drained your battery that fast .

Sometimes mine gets forgotten for a week or more.Be different if your using a power inverter with an Electric Heater fired up in 10 degree weather all night.

 

Once fully charged smart phones don’t continually draw from a power source if not being used. I’ve read that if a smart phone on low battery plugged into a cig lighter and continuasly streams for 5+ hours or overnight, it might and can drain a battery to where it won’t turn over the starter. I’m almost sure that’s what happened in my case. I fell asleep overnight steaming Amazon Prime Video documentaries for 6 hours straight with the charger cord plugged into my cigarette lighter and ignition on. Regardless, I won’t do that again.