QuestionQUESTION: My 2004 Honda Civic was working perfectly fine yesterday when I was driving it, but I went out and tried to start it a few hours ago and it was completely dead power locks and everything the starter wouldn't turn at all completely dead.
I took the battery out to charge it to see if that would fix it. a few months ago the battery was drained when the car interior light was left on all night. But when I hooked the battery up to the charger it took less then two minutes for the light to go green on the charger telling me the battery was fully charged. I put it back in the car and the car was still completely dead.
The maintenance required light cam on a few months ago but I figured that was due to the fact that I went about 1500 miles over the recommended 3000 mile limit till an oil change because it came on about the same time and the battery issue is the only issue I've had with the car.
ANSWER: The first thing to do would be to clean the battery terminals, then tighten them when you put them back on. This sounds like a bad connection to me.
Here is more info about battery problems:
http://www.myautorepairadvice.com/car_wont_start.html
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QUESTION: What should I use to clean to clean them and does that happen often? When I was driving out yesterday it didn't have trouble starting at all our any other time the battery want drained because of the light in the car.
ANSWER: Use a solution of baking soda and water about 1:4 ratio.
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QUESTION: I followed your advice to clean the battery terminals with baking soda and water. For a while I thought it might work considering the amount of lime and calcium build up on the positive terminal. But after cleaning and scrubbing most of the gunk off the car still failed to start. No reaction from the starter or power lock or any other part of the car.
Answer: OK. If you want to continue you need to get a voltmeter. You can get one at any auto parts store, or even walmart. You need to check the voltage on your battery. Be sure to check it on the actual battery posts and not the terminals that connect to the posts. Let me know what the voltage is and I'll tell you what to do next.
Follow up: OK I've never used a voltage meter before but I set the meter at the DCV setting of 20 applying it to the battery posts not the terminal gave me a reading of .29
AnswerThat should be the right setting. It looks like your battery is very dead. You need to take it out and have it charged, then load tested. Most auto part stores will do this for free. This will tell you if your battery is bad.
If it is not then I would be looking for things that might be draining it. I would also have my alternator tested to be sure it is keeping the charge on the battery.
