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.

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 AT 1:38 PM

2 Replies

KHLOW2008

MECHANIC
41,814 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 :)

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