I have a 92 Deville. I drove a pretty good distance today and on the way home stopped at the store and left the car on in the parking lot. I got in and the engine died as I tried to pull out of the lot. When I try to start the car all the lights come on but nothing happens, no clicks or anything. Lights don’t even go dim. Could this be the alternator? I know that the starter suddenly dying won’t cut off the engine like that. Everything seemed fine before idk what gave out
GM side mount battery terminals.
That’s the first place you suspect when this happens all of a sudden on a GM vehicle of this vintage.
Tester
I did just replace the battery yesterday. I’ll check the terminals now and see if that changes anything
You must not like the car so you go in the store and left it running so someone could take it.
Peel back the rubber cover for the positive battery terminal.
If there’s a lot of corrosion, replace the cable assembly.
Tester
No corrosion but there was a little metal ring between the terminal cables that musta fell out without me noticing yesterday. Luckily it was right there on the bolt down clip car fired right to life when I put it back in place. Thanks Tester!!
On a no-crank, if nothing easy to do seems to work, probably the next step is a battery load test. If the battery tests out ok, a mechanic would probably check the voltage at the starter motor during attempted cranking. That usually gets to the bottom of no-cranks the quickest.