We have a pile of dandy articles that can address your questions, but rather than list them all, here's a link to the index:
https://www.2carpros.com/articles
The most likely cause of your trouble is a failed generator. (You and I and everyone else knows what we mean by "alternator", but to be technically correct in the classroom, "alternator" is a Chrysler term). At the mileage you listed, it's a little early to suspect worn brushes inside the generator, so other suspects on the list become more likely.
An older engine can run quite a while on just a good, fully-charged battery, but modern cars have dozens of computer modules that are very sensitive to correct system voltage. As they begin to shut down, you'll see multiple warning lights on the dash start to turn on, and things like power windows and the radio will stop working. Your booster pack did a good job of starting the engine, but once disconnected, the vehicle's battery is still run down, so the engine stalled just like it did before.
If you charge your battery at a slow rate for a few hours, and the battery is good, and less than roughly three years old, give or take, you should be able to drive the vehicle a good half hour with the head lights and everything else possible turned off. The battery still has to run the fuel pump, ignition system, and all of the computers. It's possible for the electrical system to need up to 30 amps, while cars from the 1960s and '70s could get by with as little as three or four amps.
It is possible to drive with the jumper pack connected, but with some warnings. Think of that as just a small extension of the van's battery. The best ones are still only a fraction the size, electrically and physically, of the van's battery, so expect it to run down in just a few minutes. The first problem is finding enough room to stick it under the hood. A lot of vehicles today require short batteries for clearance under very low hood lines. You have to watch that the positive cable clamp doesn't hit the hood. You can also leave the hood partway open with the latch caught on just the second, or safety catch. That's risky as the hood still could fly open if you hit a bump or that safety catch is sticky and doesn't fully engage. I'd only drive that way very slowly, and just to get to safety.
As for battery failures, they all have plates inside with two different kinds of lead pressed into them. They form the negative plates and the positive plates. They're stacked alternately, with plastic separators in between. Two different kinds of metal, lead, in this case, and an acid, is what makes it possible to generate a voltage chemically. (You can do the same thing with a penny and a nickel stuck into a potato). This gets a little technical, but you won't be tested on this later. A stack of these plates makes up one cell. It develops 2.1 volts. Voltage is electrical pressure. Just about all regular car batteries have six cells in "series" meaning they're all in a line, so their voltages add up. A good fully-charged battery will measure very close to 12.6 volts.
Over time, that lead begins to flake off the plates. It floats down and collects at the bottom of the cell. The lead is where the electrons are stored. As that lead flakes away, in effect, the battery gets smaller, both in its ability to store electrons and in its ability to supply current. "Current" is electrical flow, just like water flows through a garden hose. Think of a fire hydrant fed by a municipal water tower. That can produce a lot of water flow. Now compare trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose hooked to your kitchen sink faucet. Your battery suffers the same fate. It will still measure 12.6 volts, but the starter will crank the engine a little slower, and, if you leave the head lights on, that battery can't run them as long.
Eventually enough lead flakes off the plates that it collects and builds up at the bottom of the case until it touches the positive and negative plates. That shorts out that cell. The other five cells are doing the same thing, but one always shorts out first. The remaining five cells will develop a total of 10.5 volts. It's unlikely the starter will crank the engine fast enough to start, and the computers will not operate correctly. They are very intolerant of low and unstable voltage. The only solution is to replace the battery.
Battery manufacturers know they can't stop the lead from flaking off, and they know about how quickly this occurs, so they give their batteries the longest warranty they think they can. It's very common for a battery with a five-year warranty to fail a couple of months before that warranty expires. Most batteries are "pro-rated" meaning you can get a few dollars back, but only as a credit toward another battery from the same manufacturer. That's dandy trick to get you to buy another one of that brand.
When working at a very nice car dealership, I found a way to tell when a customer's battery was about to fail. That's by observing the formation of corrosion on the terminals. As the lead flakes off the plates, it leaves less and less on them, but the charging system is still pumping electrons into the battery as though it was a brand new one. Packing excessive electrons into a smaller area causes those plates to heat up more than normal. As those electrons flow in and out of the plates, the lead gives off hydrogen gas. It bubbles to the top, then goes out the vents. With less and less plate material, what's remaining gets hotter, the gas bubbles more vigorously, then those bubbles pop right under the top of the battery's case. That splashing acid migrates out between the positive and negative posts, and the cover, where it collects on the battery cables to form that white or green corrosion we're all familiar with. My experience has been when you see that corrosion, that battery is going to develop a shorted cell within the next six months. Those "juicy rings" every battery salesman tries to sell you won't help. They do neutralize corrosion, but there won't be any corrosion to neutralize for the first four years, and once it does begin to form, it's due to the flaking lead inside the battery. The juicy rings or anti-corrosion coatings aren't going to fix what's taking place inside the battery.
Years ago when we tested a battery, we started by looking at the "cold cranking amp" rating on its sticker. That's a standardized term that allows us to compare batteries from different manufacturers. A common value today might be 700 CCA. We would perform a "load" test by drawing half the CCA, or 350 amps, in this example, for 15 seconds. Any load on a battery draws it voltage down. (You can see that by cranking the engine while the head lights are turned on. The lights will dim considerably). During that 15-second test, the battery's voltage must not drop below 9.6 volts. That just gave us a "pass" or "fail", but an experienced mechanic could tell how much of the battery's life was used up by how quickly the voltage dropped during the test.
Newer battery testers are very tiny and amazingly accurate. You enter the CCA rating, then within a few seconds, the tester draws a very short, quick spurt of current, then calculates the battery's "internal resistance" and from that, calculates the cold cranking amps the battery can develop. "Internal resistance" is technical stuff that isn't important to my sad story, but it is what causes a 12.6-volt battery to drop a lot when a load is drawn from it. It's a factor in all power supplies and all batteries. These testers display the amps the battery can develop, rather than the simple "pass or fail".
On large, older engines from the 1960s through the 1980s, GM and Ford starters typically drew up to 300 amps to get up and running, then that would drop to around 250 amps to keep the starter spinning. For more technical stuff that isn't relevant here, Chrysler used gear-reduction starters that needed around 150 amps to do the job. Today, with mostly much smaller engines, it isn't uncommon to find starters that draw less than 100 amps, so if the original battery is capable of developing 700 amps for short periods, you have more than enough battery to start the engine. As the lead flakes off and the battery effectively becomes smaller, it is still able to start the engine for a long time.
There's one notable exception I must mention for GM owners reading this and researching similar problems. The engineers redesigned their generators for the 1987 model year and went from, in my opinion, the world's second-best design to by far the worst one ever. They develop huge voltage spikes that can damage the generator's internal "diodes", and voltage regulator, and interfere with computer sensor signals. The battery is the key component in damping and absorbing those spikes, but as they age, and the lead flakes off the plates as I described, they lose their ability to do that. Repeat generator failures are very common on these vehicles. (My friend is on his sixth generator on a '99 GMC). The secret to reducing the number of repeat failures is to replace the battery at the same time as you replace the generator, unless that battery is less than about three years old. It can work fine in an '86 or older GM model.
Way back at the beginning of this story, I mentioned charging a run-down battery at a slow rate. Many home or portable chargers are capable of high charge rates to start an engine, but that isn't good for charging a battery. All "AC generators", aka "alternators", put out three-phase output which is very stable and efficient. They send current into the battery at a fairly even or smooth flow. Home chargers take alternating, single-phase current and turn it into pulsing voltage and current that goes from "zero", to maximum, to zero, repeatedly. Electrons flow in, then stop, then flow again, then stop. That pulsing vibrates the plates and helps loose lead to flake off faster than normal. While charging the battery at the higher rate may not cause a failure today, it does shorten the time span until that failure does finally occur. By setting the charger to a slower rate, and waiting an extra hour or two, the plates vibrate much less vigorously.
Your Honda is new enough that it may have a new type of battery called "absorbed glass mat", or "AGM". These have a hard time giving up the hydrogen gas, so the vehicles they come in have control circuitry to limit how fast they can recharge after starting the engine. They seem to last longer too. My Ram truck came with one that was eight years old before it failed, and I just replaced the original one last week in my 2014 Caravan. To last ten years was almost unheard of with standard lead-acid batteries.
I would start by charging your battery for a few hours, then see if it will start the engine. If it does, head to your mechanic to have the battery and the charging system tested. There are a few testers that make a paper printout. Those will include numbers for "full-load output current", charging voltage, and "ripple" voltage for the generator. Most testers just show ripple voltage as "low" or "high" with a series of flashing lights, then the mechanic has to write those down on the repair order. Ask to have those number supplied, then I can interpret them for you.
Monday, May 19th, 2025 AT 5:14 PM
