Car won't start

Drop off my dog at daycare. Get in my 95 2.4L manual transmission and she won't crank. Nothing. Lights won't come on. Seems like dead battery. Going to get a jump.

One odd I did notice is that my after market radio flickers on and off sometimes.

Just thought I'd post this while I wait for my jump.

 

Just noticed that when I turn the light switch in I hear a faint clicking sound.

 

Sounds like its just a dead battery man. Low voltage causes electronics to do crazy things.

 

Same thing happened to me in my 06 last week. 2nd battery, 7 years old, no prior symptoms, just dead. In the past I’ve always had at least a few weeks starts as a warning.

 

So I tried to jump start it ... it's cranking now but not enough to start. I gave it two or so minutes to charge up without any luck. Do I need to wait longer for it to pop? Or is it possible that the battery is too far dead for a jump to work?

I don't want to buy a new battery if it's still not going to start.

Please advise great TW forum

 

If the jumper car is running it should start it right away. Maybe let it charge for 5 minutes with the other car's RPM's a little higher?

 

A multimeter would be your best bet to check

 

Try this: disconnect, clean, replace the battery terminals.
With corroded connections, sometimes even tapping on the terminals
will create a better connection, just to get you home.

 

Very much this. It's a good idea. If it doesn't work, take the battery to your local autozone/oreilly's/walmart/whatever and have them charge up and test your battery.

Also, if your stereo is flickering, you may have some bad wiring somewhere. Cleaning your terminals is a good start, but who installed your stereo, and how recently? Solder/crimp/electrical tape? If you have some sort of intermittent short/parasitic drain, that could have killed your battery.

 

alternator

aside from now needing a new battery....

 

My 02' 4Runner does this from time to time. Best I can figure its a light relay. If I leave the lights on and cut the truck off, every now and then it keeps trying to close and kills the battery. To get it to reset, you have to remove the negative lead, let it sit for a few minutes, then reattach it. Seems to fix it for me. I keep a jump box in the back and jump it off when it dies (have had to do this maybe 3 times in the 18 months I've owned it).

 

I've jumped cars with extremely dead batteries by disconnecting the dead battery entirely and hooking the jumper cables to the battery cable ends. But, this is a manual transmission truck, right? Roll start it.

 

sometimes the battery is so dead it needs a few minutes to charge. likely its a bad alternator (but not always the alternator) that in turn used up all the battery. hope you get it going, could be just a bad battery.

 

When my battery finally died it just died hard. I left the office to drive to a meeting 22 miles away. It started just fine but when I came out of the meeting it didn't have ANY power. I got a jump and got home. Before turning it off I put the meter on it. 14.1 volts so the alternator was trying to charge. Turned it off and there was 10 volts between terminals. The battery was toast. It happens.

 

I ended up getting a jump from a tow truck. I guess it had more juice than my friend's car.

If it was the alternator, wouldn't the truck die immediately after starting it? I was able to drive it home 20 miles after the jump start so I'm guessing the alternator is good.

 

How old is the battery? I have had some that last 7 years, and others that make it 2 or 3. Some show signs like hard to crank with a/c on, and others that I have been driving, stop by a 7-11, come back, and wont turn over with no warning signs.

 

not necessarily depends how long the tow truck charged it but being you just had enough to jump start I'd think battery first. If the alternator is working properly it has enough voltage to keep it self running. If it was bad it wouldnt have enough voltage to keep itself running and used the battery till its depleted.

 

4 years old. AutoCraft brand.

I didn't get any hard cranks. There have been a handful of times over the past three months where when I went to start I would only hear a clicking sound. It usually started on the second try. I didn't think twice about this because prior to replacing my clutch master and slave cylinders I had the same issue, without the clicking sound though. I became desensitized to the starting issue.

If there's one thing I'm learning by having an older vehicle it's that you can't ignore symptoms. Like everything has a cause and it's best to figure that out before your stuck at an inconvenient time and place.

Like now all I'm thinking to myself is why the fuck didn't I do a double take when I experience a non-start and clicking noise on several prior occasions...like wtf was I thinking....hello....get that check out.

Anyway, lesson learned. Lots of lessons learned on my Tacoma.

 

New battery in....everything is so bright now!

Just the other day I was thinking to myself as I drove 'damn these headlights are weak as hell'. I totally ignored a bunch of low battery signals.

 

Great!