Hey guys
ChrisFix here
Today I'm gonna show you one of the most common problems
Anybody who ownes a car will face.
And that's when you go to start your car,
(Engine turning over)
It just won't start
I think you can hear that
My battery definitely sounds low
Do it one more time
I want you to listen...
(Engine turning over slowly, not starting)
Now this can be a few different things,
I'm gonna go through the steps that I would normally take
To try to figure out what the problem is
Given, what you just saw
So that you can get a little bit of background information,
When I go to start the car...
Well now it wont even crank.
But when I went to start the car
It was cranking.
So you know that the starter is engaging,
You know that the engine is spinning
I drove this car last night, it's been parked in my driveway, and the battery went dead.
While I was driving, I did not see any battery light come on
if you see a battery light come on,
It can be your battery or your alternator that's not charging
I didn't see any battery light come on. This was an overnight thing
The car won't start now
it got down to 30 degrees Fahrenheit last night, and batteries don't like the cold,
so it's making me think that it is a battery problem
Also, if you look at the clock right now, it's not twelve o'clock
it's 2:30 on most cars when you lose battery power your clock will reset the
twelve o'clock so we know we lost battery power
Now what I'm going to do with the car in the run position, I'm going to turn the
headlights on and you can see
shut the headlights, turn it on, the dimming of the lights and the beeping
are all indicators that we have a dying battery
these are all just little test that you could do without a multimeter
before you go take it somewhere just to kind of get some information on what's
going on
let's go check out the battery and see what's up. At this point I want you to
think about the situation and take a guess to see what you think the problem is
based on everything that we've gone through so far. So let's go take a look
at our battery and just see if there's anything that stands out this battery is
seven years old
that's something good to note batteries last on average four years so this is
almost double the lifespan of the battery if we look at the negative
ground
you can see it looks pretty clean there's some crystallization
right down there so i might have to clean the negative battery terminal you'd be
surprised on times with the negative battery terminal dirty that's the reason
why car won't start and reason why you won't get power to head lights and stuff
so that's definitely something to consider
and then the positive terminal. That looks pretty good
it could use some cleaning too but there's nothing there that really makes
me think that's the positive battery terminal looks pretty normal
if you don't know how old your battery is there should be a sticker either on
top of the battery or on the side
so here's where the date would be you know you can see here's the months
here's the years in my case you see none of them are marked off so the person who
installed this battery didn't say when the battery was purchased and installed
normally you would have a marker or in this case I think these people off
so let's just say in april of 2005 you bought this battery and how to install
so the April mark and then the number 5 mark will be marked off
I think this one has a three year warranty it says three year warranty and
then sometimes are prorated after that so you get some money back if it's like
five years and it goes bed
either way you get the idea that's a check to see when your battery was
purchased and installed and that could help you figure out if you think it
might be the battery like I said seven years is a long time for a battery
I'm pretty sure it is the battery because of that so we want to go start
the engine
it did turn over turned over very slowly it didn't sound right it sounded like it
was really working it was having a hard time and that's typical of a bad battery
so without any equipment just listening to things just doing some diagnostic
stuff checking the clock on the radio listening to hear the engine turning
over making sure everything is actually engaging hearing that the starter sounds
like it's going slow just by hearing stuff like that
we don't even need to use a multimeter or any special equipment to get an idea
what the problem is
now if you don't have a multimeter next thing you could do is just jump start
your car battery charge it up
whatever you need to do to get charge into this and start your car and then go
over to your local auto parts store they'll check your battery for free and
they'll actually put a load on it and they'll tell you the batteries bad and then
they can also check your alternator for free to tell you if the alternator is
what's causing the battery problem there is a slight chance that you could have a
draw a parasitic draw which means something is using battery power while
the engines off and using too much battery power so overnight your car goes
dead but I don't think that's the situation here
but since I do own a multimeter i have it set to 20 DC volts i'm going to turn
it on
good at my two leads here you can see here it's at zero volts I'm gonna go
black to black | red to red 10 volts that should be 12.6 or anywhere around 12.6
so this just further confirms that our battery is most likely the culprit when
you're testing with the multimeter you want to make sure that your prong here
is on this battery head and it's nice and clean
you want a good connection if this is all dirty and greasy and you put this on
there you might not get any voltage or you might have weak voltage so you can
see the top of my battery post is very clean
I have a good connection and that goes for the black negative side and for the
Red positive side
both are clean and ready to go. So obviously this doesn't cover everything
I could go 20 minutes about this. I'm pretty sure it's a bad battery
I'm gonna go jump this and I'm gonna go take a ride to the store and then we're
going to see how they actually test the battery and they'll confirm if it's a
bad battery or not they do it all for free
it's just worth it so let's go see what they tell us
(Engine turning over)
(Engine starting)
(Engine running)
Now because the car started out when I use the battery jumper you could hear it
actually still wag
but then finally there's enough juice and that jumper to get started
and because I'm not getting a battery light as the cars running and I mean I
could turn my headlights on and I still won't get the battery light
I could add the blower motor here turn it up all the way
still no battery light. The car didn't stall so I don't think it's an alternator problem
I think it's a bad battery. And again I'm just going through things that it might be
just so that you can get an idea of how to do all these tests without even
using a multimeter. You could be on the side of the road with no tools at all
and be doing these little simple tests just to check things out
so let's go out have your local parts store check the battery and we'll see
how bad this battery actually is
I'm here at the local auto parts store and they're going to test out our
battery for me.
Just gonna, connect this load tester
Put a load on the battery
We're getting a printout of the results
ok so just as we thought we need to replace the battery the voltage was good
which makes sense because we just ran the car for 15 minutes to get to the
store that was 13 volts the cold cranking amps should have been 850 but
it was 315 and then it said the battery failed and it should be replaced
so even though we're going to go inside and they're going to show us what
battery that we need just want to double check on the battery somewhere it will
tell you how many cold cranking amps right there it says there's 850 cold
cranking amps. 1,000 regular amps and the size of the battery is 65n
just got back from paying and by the time I even get back there already have
the new battery in and I'm ready to go so let's see if she starts up.
Starts up like a brand new car. Nice and simple
And that's exactly how I go through troubleshooting a 'no start' condition.
In this case we had a bad battery.
But now you got to see how I go through step by step
To try to identify where the problem is.
Is it the alternator? Is it the battery? Is the starter engaging?
So hopefully this video is helpful.
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The tip for this video is, grab a marker
Normally, on the batteries you'll have a month and a year.
This one doesn't have it and you'll be able to mark off what month and year you purchased the battery
Plus you do get a three year warranty and also batteries
Last around 4 years
so after four years you might want to get your battery checked with the cold cranking amps
Like you saw what we did but since this doesn't have a thing to mark it off,
Right here
I'll just put January
15
I'll put it up here, too
So now I know I purchased this battery in January 2015. And this video is going
to have two tips. Since we have a brand new battery, we want to keep these posts
as rust free as possible
that will give us the best connection in here. Normally, I'd recommend using
something like WD-40 everybody has WD 40 you just spray a little bit on there and
you're good to go
but I got something even better this stuff is called get some 1,000
it's a spray lubricant it lasts even longer than wd-40 just get a little bit
on there
Just like that. Get out positive terminal here
spray that down too
and now our terminals are protected and they'll stay clean and corrosion free
and you're good to go