Battery or alternator or what

JENKINS

MEMBER
GMC S15

My 2002 jimmy is 4+4 v6 and has 73k on it I recently had to store it away and haven't driven it for about 2 months. I returned to start the car and get fluids going through it. The battery was dead, I got a boost let it run for about 25 minutes. I turned it off and tried to start it again and I wouldn't give. It started again with a boost but had the same problem when I repeated the process. What gives?

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 AT 8:39 PM

2 Replies

RASMATAZ

MECHANIC
75,992 POSTS

Could be both at one time-one is not putting out, the other is not taking it.

Get a cheap radio shack voltmeter and comeback and I'll teach you how to troubleshoot the charging system and battery testing

Or you can remove both and take it to Autozone for testing.

And again I will go for the battery it might be sulfated-won't take the charge. Get the battery squared away then comeback-you might have a short somewhere within the electrical system that's draining the battery that you are not aware of.

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Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 AT 1:49 AM

ROTORY-POWER

MEMBER
9 POSTS

I have this same problem with my '88 Jaguar XJ6. I don't drive it very often and it sometimes sits for a month or two. I've found that after about a month-and-a-half the battery is dead. It usually works fine again after driving around for a couple hours or having it recharged. With all of the electrical stuff on cars these days something is bound to slowly drain the battery. The best way I've found to avoid this is to completely disconnect the battery if you are going to let it sit for extended periods of time. Of coarse you loose your radio pre-sets & clock, but if you don't drive that doesn't really matter anyway.

Good Luck, hopefully the battery will take a recharge so that you don't have to buy a new one. Many places will recharge your battery for free and have better charges to do so (sometimes the smaller charges you buy in the store won't do the job with a completely drained battery).

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Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 AT 2:22 AM