I want to thank everyone for all their good advise, i really appreciate it. AAA came out today, he hooked up a machine to check the car. I watched it go green and say good for the alternator, starter, then it went red for battery and said “bad replace” he also said my battery connections were loose.
Is this the same guy that installed that battery? Battery cable clamps are not supposed too come loose.
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Wow i didn’t know AAA did that, i will have to keep my eye out to see if they try to chancel me.
Read your contract or call AAA . Most of their policies only allow a certain number of calls in a 12 month period .
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True i think it’s 4
In Minnesota 50 years ago, it was 3 but every club decides and years pass. Can’t remember the guy’s name but cost sales and commissions while saving emergency road service charges.
I have both AMOCO (whoever is handling that now-think Allstate but don’t know) and on my car policy. I wanted the motor club when traveling because they always (usually) were able to respond regardless of where I (or the wife) was. I used the insurance reimbursement ($5 month ERS) if I just called someone myself or as a supplement. Since I retired though I’ve only had two calls-after I hit a coon and lost my radiator and at the gas station when my 3 year old battery died. I don’t plan to save a lot of money on them and I don’t think they make a lot of money on me. We just drive a lot.
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No this is a different guy, maybe the last guy who installed the battery didn’t tighten then enough or some thing like that. It was the round metal part that goes around the battery, i’m a lay person on this our car is a 1993 so maybe they got old or something like that.
When the guy came out from AAA he said the connection to the battery were loose, he pointed to the metal things that hook to the battery, i wonder if that was the problem.
It’s a little scary for us now because the 3rd party company that AAA contracts with doesn’t want to come out to our house anymore because we complained that the guy they sent out wasn’t wearing a mask and didn’t know what he was doing . So AAA sent out their own fleet truck instead but it took much longer.
Yeah, but the one year that I went over the limit, they just charged me more.
There’s the Minneapolis club and the Minnesota club so depending on which, they are separate. Also there are different levels and things may have loosened up in 50 years. Just sayin’.
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When it comes to multiple replacement of the same part that usually points to a misdiagnosis and at some point I can’t say I blame them for refusing to come back out.
Much like some years ago when I stopped to help a guy whose Nissan had left him stranded a 130 miles from home. He told me in the previous year the battery had been replaced 3 times, the alternator twice, the starter motor twice, and the ignition switch once. Does anyone believe for one second that multiple failures of multiple parts would occur? (Just asking rhetorically.)
It took me less than 5 minutes to find and fix the actual problem which caused the engine to randomly die. A fusible link with a corroded end…
He offered to pay me but I refused and simply suggested that when he got back to Tulsa he should drop by the shop, confront them about the small fortune in wasted money on unneeded parts/labor and tell them to spend a couple of minutes in thought before making WAGs.
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I’m gonna park that one in the back of my mind. I wonder if that was what was ailing my Riviera? Replaced everything else. Might still be driving it. Naw.
You’ve received some good suggestions, and you might want to get the electrical system checked professionally, by a real mechanic.
One question: how much are you driving the car? Too many short trips, too few total miles, or long periods of sitting and the alternator simply won’t have enough time to stay ahead of the charge taken out. This happened to my parents as they got older, in mid-western winter their only driving was to a grocery store under a mile distant, several trips/week, headlights, heater fan, and seat warmers full on. Their battery required regular jumping and replacement once-twice/yr. I got them a charger with connectors allowing it to be plugged in at the battery (obviating clamps, which my mom couldn’t manage). Plugging it in overnight every week or two got them through the winters and they drove enough in warmer seasons to keep things charged.
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The thing is a neighbor 2 houses down told me he had the same problem with his AAA battery and is waiting for them to replace it again, he is a mechanic himself and he says he thinks AAA is letting them just sit on the shelf to long, the last battery came from a 3rd party contractor of AAA and they didn’t refuse because of our calling to many times about the battery they refused because we complained about one of their tech not wearing a mask but AAA them selves came out , they did check it and the machine that was hooked up to the car said bad battery replace, i wonder if it just needed to be charged would it have said that, and then they wouldn’t have replaced it. We are going to try to drive more but we really aren’t driving any less than we have for years so i just don’t know.
What brand is the battery? Batteries can be bad out of the box, take it to an auto parts store and get it checked. Sorry not familiar with AAA battery. How many CCA? Sounds like you need someone besides AAA. Autozone here replaced the battery in my daughters car, no extra charge, cleaned the connectors and checked everything out I was impressed. Could be a bad connection somewhere and not necessarily a battery problem.
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I think a stepwise approach might help here instead of simply relying on what other people are telling and trying to figure out if they’re right or not, particulary since these others don’t seem to be very helpful in resolving the issue.
If it were me, step 1 would be picking up a digital multimeter, or even a digital voltmeter that plugs into your cigarette lighter, and verifying your alternator is generating about 13.5 volts while the car is running. That can be done by putting the leads of the multimeter on the appropriate battery posts. If the voltage is too low, then the problem might more likely be the alternator and not the battery.
If the alternator seems to be OK then step 2 would be to check the tightness of the connections on the battery, and that can be done with a small adjustable wrench.
Finally (step 3), if everything checks out but you’re still not driving the car enough to keep the battery charged, then a plug-in charger/batter maintainer would be an excellent investment. If that doesn’t make a difference then, as others have noted, the AAA battery may have had problems from the get go.
Other posters have noted that there may be other possibilities, but these are simple (and cheap) things to try and you don’t need to rely on anyone else to figure it out for you. My own neurosis is to make the mistakes myself, so that’s my shortcoming that I may be projecting onto you here. Still, it seems like you’re getting a runaround without getting any closer to solving the problem. By trying some things on your own you may be able to get a truer picture of what is going on.
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Then you only repeat what others have stated, check the charging rate, inspect the cable connections, recharge the battery as a maintenance requirement.
As for # 2, the service provider stated that the battery clamps were loose, the OP had been advised days ago to check the battery cables but this was not performed by the OP.
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He did mentioned the year and make of car on the article.
See Post 18