After experiencing electrical issues, parked vehicle turned it off and now it will not start

JENIDOWDY

MEMBER
2007 TOYOTA RAV4
4 CYL
AUTOMATIC
175,000 MILES

I was driving along, flipped on my brights, dash lit up all the possible lights, dash lights went dark but then came back on. During this time, car was driving but felt bogged down. I flipped the brights back off but this did not help. I got to a stop sign and turned on my turn signal, which seemed to magically clear up the mess. Made it home safely but as soon as I turned the car off, it would not start back up. Did not start this morning either. I had previously been told that my battery was fine and that it was not the alternator, just to clean my battery terminals. What do you think? If I can get it started, I want to get it fixed this weekend and hoping it won't be too costly.

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

Hi,

This sounds like an electrical issue but I am not sure how to explain the bogging down of the engine. Also, I am not sure turning the turn signal on corrected anything however, if this was an electrical concern then it could just be an issue with cluster. However, this is all speculation until we have the codes that are in system. This will help explain what may have happened.

Also, how often does this happen? Was it only one time? My only concern is if you get this checked out and there happens to be no codes in it and they can't get it to do this, they may tell you there is nothing they can do.

I would suggest just trying to get this do it so you can show them what it does. If there are no codes, I would not guess at what this could be because if it only happened one time, it may never happen again. Then again it could start doing it more often. If this is the case, that is actually good because if it acts up the shop is much more likely to figure it out.

Let me know if there are codes and we can go from there. Thanks.