Dead battery

[frs23]

hmm this dead battery issue happened to me too. The battery was flat out super dead after 3 days sitting around. Everything is stock and there are not installs to the electrical in anyway. All I did was plug in the ODBII reader to check out the reader works, unplugged the reader, then left the car sitting for the 3 days. No signs that the interior lights were left on.

[cdrazic93]

dead battery?

Its totaled. Better find a new ride OP.

[housecat]

I accidentally left on my cabin light, and it drained the battery overnight. The battery was reading about 9 volts the next day; electric doors and lights were not functional.

I thought it was odd that running a small cabin light overnight would kill the battery, and I did drive the car that day (it wasn't just sitting for days). I ended up replacing it with a Duralast Gold battery from Autozone, figuring that it would be more reliable than recharging the factory battery.

[banane63]

Replace your inside light bulb by a led one !

[steve99]

Originally Posted by stugray

For all of you using these high cranking jump systems to start your car with a dead battery: IF you "quick jump" a dead car then leave the car to charge the battery all by itself, get ready to buy a new alternator.

Alternators are not designed to charge a dead battery.
You might get away with it once or twice, but it is definitely something you are told to NOT do by the alternator manufacturer.

If you have a completely dead battery, you should disconnect it from the car (make sure it is NOT frozen) and trickle charge it at a low amp rate (2amps) for 30 hours before hooking it back up.
60 Amp-hour battery => 2 Amps * 30 hours = 60 Amp-hours

The other thing i found out is that most of these modern switch-mode fancy computerized battery chargers wont start charging a completely flattened battery . Even one's that say they will charge flat battery's seem to fail to detect a dead flat battery connected to them ie terminal volts close to zero.

On two occasions I have had to revert to my trusty old transformer type battery charger I built in college to charge peoples completely flat battery's. Once they get a bit of charge in the battery the new fangled fancy ones will work .

I'm sure this results in people throwing away batterys that could be revived.

modern battery's often go completely open circuit when they fail, jump starting a car with an open circuit battery may cause issues as a working battery acts as a large capacitor smoothing transient voltages in the vehicle.

[stugray]

Originally Posted by steve99

The other thing i found out is that most of these modern switch-mode fancy computerized battery chargers wont start charging a completely flattened battery . Even one's that say they will charge flat battery's seem to fail to detect a dead flat battery connected to them ie terminal volts close to zero.

On two occasions I have had to revert to my trusty old transformer type battery charger I built in college to charge peoples completely flat battery's. Once they get a bit of charge in the battery the new fangled fancy ones will work .

I'm sure this results in people throwing away batterys that could be revived.

modern battery's often go completely open circuit when they fail, jump starting a car with an open circuit battery may cause issues as a working battery acts as a large capacitor smoothing transient voltages in the vehicle.

I just witnessed this yesterday.
I plugged in a cheap transformer based charger (NOT a maintenance trickle charger) to my granddaughter's car that had been sitting for almost a year with a dead battery.
The charger said "OK" when you first plugged it in and it didn't appear to be charging at all.
I left it on a 2 amp manual charge and will see if it ever began charging after 24 hours.


If that doesn't work, another trick is to hook up the charger, then jump another charged battery to the dead battery.
The charger will see this and begin charging.
Then you can disconnect the good battery and most of the time the charger will continue charging the dead battery.
PITA, but it usually works.