Yesterday morning I went to start my car and as the title states, it did not start. However, I’ve had a low/completely dead battery before, and the problem that occurred today seems different.
The screen had a bunch of vertical lines (think stereotypical broken LCD screen). But after trying to start my car multiple times, the screen would always be completely jacked up, and look different every time (different colors, different positions of vertical lines). My dashboard looked like a Christmas tree at times, and other times it would actually state the error. The one that caught my attention was “Start in progress please wait”
Unfortunate timing because I have a 3000 mile trip from Alaska through Canada to the lower 48 in a two weeks. I figured I’d have my car towed due to wanting to address the issue before my upcoming trip. The car would click a few times and I had interior lights working. I figured it wasn’t my battery, so I didn’t even attempt to jumpstart it (silly me). The tow truck driver arrives and of course I feel like an idiot since the vehicle started immediately with a jump start. Everything worked perfectly except an “AWD disabled error”
I drive it 2 minutes to the local mechanic and he runs a few electrical tests. He said everything appears normal, and to come back for a deeper look if the problem continues. I shut off the engine and it immediately turned back on. No AWD error. Then I drove for about 20 minutes and let my car idle for another 10 minutes to charge everything up.
Fast forward 4 hours later, and my battery is drained again. Same issues as I had this morning. Weird screens and tons of errors (like the battery is low) but no low battery error.
Additionally, this problem did occur after a rainy night. I didn’t notice any water inside the vehicle, and never have… but I’m hoping no electrical components were fried. I’ll be checking the two fuses from the battery to starter and fuse box today, and then back to the mechanic it goes. I don’t have the time to deal with it with my move coming up, but I’ll test what I can this weekend and try to point the mechanic in the right direction if possible.
After digging through some forums, my thoughts of potential problems include: starter, starter cable fuse, alternator, bad battery.
Any thoughts on what might be draining my battery?
