Today I got out for 5 minutes came back and then boom no start.

GRIFFIN_FRANK

MEMBER
2004 TOYOTA CAMRY
4 CYL
2WD
AUTOMATIC
170,000 MILES

The car has no problems and then out of the blue it will decide it does not want to start. Today I got out for 5 minutes came back and then boom no start. The battery is fully charged but when this happens there is not enough power available to run the wipers or brake lights. I can sometimes hear that click sound as if the battery did not have enough power. As suddenly as it started the problem goes away in 20 or 30 minutes. I am guessing it is some kind of short or something. Possible contributing factors? When getting in the car today I quickly jumped into the car to start it while the door was still partially opened. The plastic undercovering on both cars below the engine are partially gone for various reasons.

2 Replies

KHLOW2008

MECHANIC
41,815 POSTS

Such intermittent failings are possibly due to dirty battery terminals. Disconnect the battery terminals, clean and retighten them to retest.

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Thursday, February 25th, 2021 AT 3:45 PM

GRIFFIN_FRANK

MEMBER
2 POSTS

I figure this will help someone down the line, I knew it was not the terminals since I wiggled those things all over the place and it was such a sudden drop in power. The battery color and all looked good but it turned out that I blew a cell in the battery. There was also a small hole at the top of the battery. After I replaced the battery it started up fine. I did have a side effect of the idle being way too low. The car killed a few times while stopped. I replaced a belt on the car a few days later and all of a sudden the idle problem went away :)