2000 Oldsmobile Intrigue 6 cyl Automatic
hello, thank you for answering my question. About 2 weeks ago I started having problems with my car starting. I assumed it was the battery, but have not been able to get a new one yet. I have been charging my battery with a charger since the first time I had to get a jump start, which again has been about 2 weeks. The car starts after a few hours of charging, but wont start again after I have driven it and then shut it off. I've had a few people tell me to make sure it was not my alternator before I bought a new battery and one of them also told me that you can disconnect the positive terminal from the battery while it is running, and if it shuts off that means my alternator is bad. Well, I am a woman and I know very little about cars, so I allowed him to do this for me yesterday...he disconnected it for just a few seconds and the car continued to run and there didn't seem to be any signs of a problem, but I have since found out this is an old test they would do on cars back in the 70s and on new cars it can cause a voltage spike through the car and cause major problems with the computer system. I am worried that this might have happened because the car was on a charger all night last night(about 9-10 hours) and when I tried to start it, it cranked a couple of times and then there was a series of clicks. I haven't been able to get it started since. My question is how likely is this to happen with the car on and idle and nothing else on, and also is a voltage spike noticeable when it happens?
hello, thank you for answering my question. About 2 weeks ago I started having problems with my car starting. I assumed it was the battery, but have not been able to get a new one yet. I have been charging my battery with a charger since the first time I had to get a jump start, which again has been about 2 weeks. The car starts after a few hours of charging, but wont start again after I have driven it and then shut it off. I've had a few people tell me to make sure it was not my alternator before I bought a new battery and one of them also told me that you can disconnect the positive terminal from the battery while it is running, and if it shuts off that means my alternator is bad. Well, I am a woman and I know very little about cars, so I allowed him to do this for me yesterday...he disconnected it for just a few seconds and the car continued to run and there didn't seem to be any signs of a problem, but I have since found out this is an old test they would do on cars back in the 70s and on new cars it can cause a voltage spike through the car and cause major problems with the computer system. I am worried that this might have happened because the car was on a charger all night last night(about 9-10 hours) and when I tried to start it, it cranked a couple of times and then there was a series of clicks. I haven't been able to get it started since. My question is how likely is this to happen with the car on and idle and nothing else on, and also is a voltage spike noticeable when it happens?
Aug 27, 2010 at 11:49 AM