Electric dies when trying to start, disconnect/reconnect battery starts fine
 

This weird issue popped up last night.

After visiting a friend's house I was walking up to my car. I unlocked it and the interior lights came on and everything worked as normal. But when I tried to turn the key to start the engine everything cut out. I thought I had left a door open or head lights on or something so I jumped it using my friends car and everything was fine for the drive home (30 minute drive).

This morning I walked out to my garage and unlocked the car. Just like last night everything was fine and working until I turned the key to start the car. Again everything died. The difference between last night and this morning was I didn't have anyone to jump me. So out of desperation I disconnected the battery cables and reconnected them (pop off, pop on. super simple). I had power back (locks, windows, radio, ac, lights, etc.) and when I tried to start the car it started perfectly. I drove to work (15 minute drive), and when I got to work this morning I turned the car off in the parking lot and tried starting it up again. Everything died.

I don't know what could be wrong. It sounds like a battery problem, but why would disconnecting/reconnecting solve it? Could it be fuses? I don't think it is alternator. Just looking for some expertise/creative thinking. Any help you can provide is appreciated!

Could be a few things


My main guess would be bad battery. It has enough juice to keep lights on but not enough to crank the car over
second guess would be loose or bad connection at battery (Especially because you unhooked it and it worked when you hooked it back up) Dirty connection?
third would be the main fuse on the batter block itself, could be half popped, but unlikely.


First thing I would do is take it autozone or whatever where they do free battery tests takes a few minutes and its free
or change to a known working battery and rule that out


if its more of an electrical problem I would wait for somebody else to answer

Yeah, I'm planning to get the battery tested later today. Just feels weird to me that the unhooking/reconnecting it allows for the car to start. I feel that if battery was bad it wouldn't be strong enough to start the car on it's own.

Could be dirty connections, I haven't cleaned them in the ~2 years I've owned, I will do that later today as well.

Is there any bubbles on the sides of the battery?

Didn't look hard this morning, but I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Will take another look after work when I have to unhook/rehook to get my car to start. Haha.

Autozone will test across the entire battery, but not the individual cells in a battery.

I had this same issue on a battery in my old Volvo R. It tested fine at autozone with the method they used. Dealership tested individual cells, and one was bad.

It depends where you go then I guess
I'm in Canada and Partsource test the whole board too was a longer scan
Him being in the MI I know they have Autozone and Oriellys

UPDATE: I cleaned the connections last night and have not had the problem since. So if anyone else is experiencing an issue like this, give your connections some scrub love.

I was going to say, t was a dirty or loose battery connection.

Right on man

i always "WTF" if i experience unexpected battery problem and realized it was simple/minor issue