My car needs a jump every day(that I need to drive it…) for some reason. The odd part about it is it will not start right away from a jump, I have to let the cables be connected for a few minutes, and then it will start right up. The battery will hold charge for a few hours, continue to start right up afterwords, but the next morning, the car is dead again. Won’t turn over, won’t even unlock the doors like its supposed to. Car is a 95 E36 318iS. I had the battery checked at Autozone and it was fine. I’m guessing its the alternator, or would it be possible that the power/ground wires for the system in the car came loose and are causing this issue? Car has run for like 45 minutes straight after being started without issues.
I haven’t really looked into it yet because it is constantly raining here, and I can’t drive it to the garage obviously, but I’d like to be home for Thanksgiving so any other suggestions as to what it could be?
I’d check the battery terminals, grounds. And a bad alternator would make a battery drain and not charge, thus having to keep jumping it. Have a multimeter handy and check the voltage with it off then with it running, 10-11v off and 14-15v running. If the batt checks fine, then the alt checks fine
might be a short in the wiring harness.
10-11v when the car is sitting is on the low side. I don’t trust autozone for testing either, use a multimeter. I took a starter there and it passed but it turned real slow so I bought a new one and sure enough it worked. Should have just hooked the battery up to the starter.
It isn’t the power line to the starter(which jumping will help since a weak connection sometimes just needs a boost to get to a “normal” level of juice, and you would still have power in the car since the battery would be good.) It sounds like it could be a power line, or the battery itself being grounded, and maybe a weak battery in cahoots. This would drain the battery dead, and you would need more than just a quick charge. Definitely check the voltage while running to make sure the alternator is charging, and clean up your terminals and look for corroded connections. If the car keeps running there is a good chance the alternator is keeping it going, but a weak battery with a draw could easily be dead by morning.
something is draining the battery, I wish you the best of luck figuring it out. shit like this is not fun! this is something I would pay someone I trust to do, just not worth the headache imho
but ya, like everyone else said- make sure the connections are good. turn the car off and see if anything stays on that isn’t supposed to
leave the battery disconnected overnight to see if there is a draw, or if the battery itself is the culpret. it is most def not the alt
Yep, go for a drive so it’s well charged up then check the voltage. It should be over 12 with the car off. Then disconnect it and check the voltage again. If it’s more when it’s disconnected you have a bad drain. If it’s the same leave it disconnected anyway. If the car will start the next day there is a slow drain. If it won’t I’d say the battery is bad regardless of what Autozone says.
this will work but i would use a dmm and put it in series with the pos battery cable and the battery (you have to unhook the pos battery cable) and set it to amps, and see how much draw on the battery there is. I would bet you should have less than 10mA draw from the battery when the car is keyed off and everything is off (dome light etc) anything significantly more than that could kill the battery overnight, and you should start pulling fuses to locate the problem circuit