will1018

Hey guys,
I've been away at college and have not driven my tl in about 4 months. I went to drive it today and got in an it had no power what so ever. So I went to jump it assuming the battery was drained. I popped the hood and hooked up some jumpers. When the jumpers were connected to both cars the lights on the car came on. I went to start the car and when I tuned the ignition the engine clicked once then everything went black then after a few seconds it clicked again the lights came on for a second then everything went dark. I released the key an the cars lights came back on. I went around to check the battery and noticed a decent amount of blue corrosion between the wire clamp and the battery connection. I'm thinking the issue may be with the starter but I'm not sure because I've never had any issues with it in the past. Has Anyone had a similar experience and solved it.

blueracer17

Same thing happened to me last year when I came home from school. I put a new battery in it and problem was solved.

will1018

Okay I'll try to find a battery to swamp mine with and see if that was really the issue with my car.

erdoc48

Once the battery is that flat for that long, it's likely it can't be saved. I agree that once you swap the battery, you should be fine. If leaving it for a long time unused in the future, I'd connect a Battery Tender (for my MR2 and MC which are seasonal vehicles, they're always on the Tender and always ready for use). The old battery is probably sulfated (basically ruined) and it would be a good idea to get a battery terminal brush, clean all the blue corrosion off the terminals of the cables, and use dielectric grease on the new battery terminals and cable terminals at the time of installation of the new battery.

Batteries when not used regularly (except for AGM type) do poorly, unless they're kept in a relatively good/normal state of charge. I learned my lesson when I had completely flat batteries on the seasonal vehicles as above.

bluetl04

iTrader: (4)

Most likely your battery is toast from the descriptions you have mentioned. Buy a new battery and you should be all set...goodluck

Jesstzn

This might be a good part of your starting problem.. Clean and/or replace the cable and clean the other cable too .. if it can't ground it won't start ..

roof2006

It sounds like the running car wasn't generating enough power to turn your starter. Before buying a new battery, try revving the engine of your running car while turning the key of the "dead" one.

blkmz3

battery is probably dead. you can take it to autozone where they will do a health check overnight on it to see if it holds charge after a full re-charge. if it checks out then keep the battery. if not then its time to buy new one.

kingkong_dav

did your alarm go on and drain the battery?

will1018

no its been in my garage back home, has not been moved in 5 months. I am back at school now and i did not have time to work on the car before i left. im leaning towards bad battery/terminals/wires. and for the car being dead, I had an issue with the passenger door where sometimes it wouldn't fully depress the button that tells the car that the door is shut. and even when the cars lights are set to "always off" the small light at the bottom of the door would stay on. so if anyone back home ever went and grabbed something out of the car through the passenger side and didn't shut the door properly it would've killed the battery. which i am almost certain happened because all the change was taken out of my center console haha.

lusid

Time to invest in a small battery maintainer aka trickler. (sp)