Won't start

[Jax MJ Luvr]

I got my interior pretyt much all buttoned up, got my nice new stereo system setup, ran it for a bit and accidently drained the battery. I have a charger, so I hooked it up and let it trickle charge, but it says the battery is full... but once I pull the charger off, there's no juice...

 

so I tried putting the charger on the "start engine" setting, so it will give me the juice to turn the engine over... but all it does is click click click when I try to start it...

 

even with a dead battery, shouldn't it start or should I go buy a new battery 1st and eliminate that as an issue? If it still doesn't turn over, but still clicks... would that likely be a dead starter?

[Pete M]

If it clicks, that means there's enough juice to fire the solenoid, but not necessarily enough to turn over the starter. This can be due to a dead battery (had it happen last winter with the Dakota), corroded cables not flowing enough amps, poor cable connection at the battery or starter, or bad starter (just recently our minivan's starter had a bad solinoid that wasn't making good enough contact every time), and I'm sure I'm missing something. Most chargers are only capable of a small amount of amps compared to a battery, so if the battery is toast, it's very likely that the charger can't turn over the engine on it's own. I would double-check all the connections and check the battery with a voltmeter. Have you tried jumping it from another vehicle? That might flow more amps than the charger. On a side note, I was able to fire up the Dakota with the charger and a 7-volt battery (though I din't know it was that bad at the time), but the truck wouldn't run if the charger was removed or the rpms fell below 2000. Even the alternator wasn't strong enough to overcome a bad battery (at idle at least).

Jeep on!

--Pete

[DirtyComanche]

Sounds like you toasted your bat. If it was getting weak, running it down to nothing might have been the final straw.

[Jax MJ Luvr]

bought a replacement battery, started right up... I planned on having the dealership give it a good once over, so I'll let them know to double check the alternator output and the starter too... since I had a starter that was messed up before that was sucking way too much juice to turn over and killed 2 batteries in my Cherokee before the dealership figured it out.

 

Plus, I want to have them check all my sensors and cooling system, since the aux fan will kick on once the engine warms up, but it never turns off.. which bothers me.