Anyone have any ideas on this?

I get in the car and have bright dome lights, turn the key to Acc/On and get dash lights, heating fan, stereo, etc. The instant I try to start the car, everything in the cabin goes dead. If you replace "the instant I try to start the car" with "the instant I try to turn on my headlights", same thing happens. I could usually do this just once or twice before I needed to put the battery on the charger to get my dome lights, etc back.

I took my battery into Batteries Plus this morning and they claim there's nothign wrong with the battery. The guy even said he put more draw on it than a starter would and the battery handled it fine. His readout said ~550 cold cranking amps.

Last night I was able to charge the battery to run the tests described above and even tried to start the car / work the lights with the charger going. Today when I put the battery on the charger, I got a fault code telling me the battery was "sulfated"?

Any thoughts?

did you keep the battery on a battery tender over the winter? If not, then the battery probably deep discharged and the plates are now coated in sulfer. This will make the battery very very weak, and not hold much of a charge. The same stuff happened to me last year. I replaced the battery and keep it on a battery tender over the winter now.

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1993 3000GT VR-4 (build in progress)
1994 3000GT SL
Lead, Follow, or get out of my way!

Also know as:
"dead weight", "wrong wheel drive noob"

I just had a very similar issue. No juice along with dimmed lights when trying to start it. Charged the battery for 24 hours and still no dice. Took the battery in and checked out fine. One thing I noticed over the past year was while cranking the engine, it was losing cranking power. I just assumed my battery was in need of replacement soon.

I bypassed the starter solenoid and the starter would still not move. So I replaced the starter and it resolved the problem. My guess was there was a short in the solenoid. There's a connector underneath the throttle body that leads to the starter solenoid and relay. I think it has 3 wires and you can put 12v on one of the pins to feed the starter solenoid. I just don't remember which one leads to the starter solenoid but if I remember correctly, you should be safe if you put 12v on all pins. Ignition, relay, starter solenoid if my memory serves correctly.

John, thanks for the reply; hmm, that sounds like it could be the case. I didn't do anything with the battery over the winter except pull it out of the car and store it in the basement on a block of wood. Wouldn't it be surprising that I was able to start the car 3 or 4 times after putting the battery back in this spring before this happened? If the battery is hosed, I wonder why it tested out this morning when I took it in. Probably means no warranty coverage. (Battery is less than 2.5 years old, I was expecting some level of pro-rated coverage if it was bad.)

cenatix, thanks for the reply; wouldn't the fact that the same thing happens when I try to turn on my headlights -- starter completely out of the picture -- be an indication that it's not anything to do with the starter solenoid?

I suppose I should be able to test the bad battery theory by using the battery from my Escape, eh?

Your terminals are dirty and aren't making good connection.

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06 Blue EVO 9

Greg, thanks for the reply, but no way! I wire brushed them and the clamps just two weeks ago. I don't have that special tool for the posts, so maybe it wasn't a great job -- the dude at Batteries Plus cleaned them up really good, maybe I'll just magically have better luck now that he's done that.

That is, if my battery charger isn't reading F03 - Sulfated Condition when I get home and check on it.

I had identical symptoms. For me, it was loose wires at the battery terminals. It wasn't the connection to the battery itself, it was the wires to the clamp connection.

If they're clean, then they're not tight enough.

Not exactly. I also flipped on the head lights and it immediately dimmed the lights. That's why I figured it was battery related. But I checked the battery after letting it charge over night and it had a full charge (with terminals off).

I have never had a problem like this with a starter before in any of the cars that I have worked on. For some reason, it was drawing a ton of amperage which leads me to believe there was a short in the starter. After replacing the starter, problem solved.

As others have stated, check for a loose connection or bad ground. It makes sense since you didn't tighten down the clamps with the proper tool. The electrode gel works well too and helps with corrosion.

If all else fails, make sure you don't have excessive amp draw coming from your electrical system.

Sorry for the confusion. What I meant to say the starter itself had a short. The solenoid itself was functioning properly. And my first post stated I bypassed the solenoid, but I bypassed the starter relay.

Problems solved. After charging the battering 3+ hours on friday afternoon, I hooked it up, made sure everything was clean, made sure everything was tight, and the car started right up. No problems all weekend.

My positive battery clamp is kind of cheap and has some extra cables running to it for stereo crap, I'm not sure the extra connections were as tight as they could be.

Thanks all who responded.

So after all that hype all you did was charge it and tighten the clamps?

I want my money back.

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