QuestionMy mom's car had a faulty battery replaced in July '08. The car ran fine till
recently. Problem was that the car would start once, but when our shopping
errand was over it would not start. It "turned over" but no ignition until after a
few tries and several minutes. We took it to the shop and the mechanic
replaced the distributor cap and rotor, changed oil and topped up all levels.
Today, being a freezing day, I plugged the car in for several hours. Battery
seems to still be okay, but again it is just not "catching". I have called the
shop back and they are planning to take another look at it, but after reading
several articles on line it looks like it could be a costly job to search for a
solution. We don't want to spend tons of money replacing things just in case,
but mom still loves her little car so if there is a likely solution we would be
very grateful!
AnswerHi Jo,
Use the ignition key to get a readout for any fault codes that would be a clue as to what is wrong: turn the key "on-off-on-off-on and leave on" doing that in 5 seconds or less elapsed time. Then watch the 'check engine' light which remains 'on' to begin to flash, pause, flash, etc. Count the number of flashes before each pause. Then repeat the process to be sure you have an accurate count. The last two sets of flashes will be 5 in each, always. Then write back and tell me the flash counts in the order of appearance. We'll go from there with a much better idea of what is wrong. This takes advantage of the self-diagnostic capability of the engine computer which probably has observed the reason for the 'no start'. You might be able to fix it yourself!
Roland
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