I was driving our 2018 CRV the other day when everything suddenly stopped working, dash lit up, power steering fails and it cut out in the middle of the road. Managed to roll it into the side and tried it again after half an hour or so, started and managed to drive it home (we were only a mile or so from home luckily). Thought it might be a charging issue which had drained the battery but it did start later, although sluggish to turn which I wouldn’t expect with a dead battery. Just checked the obvious things and all looks ok - I charged the battery, seems fine and is taking a charge, I’ve got no warning lights and no fault codes logged against the engine.
My wife isn’t keen to drive it while I haven’t found a fault, anyone got any thoughts on this?
If you are in the USofA most Autozone stores will check you battery for you for free . This could be as simple as a battery on it’s way out or an alternator starting to fail .
Thanks, I’m not in the USA but we can get that done here too. I suspect a flaky alternator, maybe glitched out but is working at the minute while I’m testing it. I’ll get them both checked out.
Thanks for your suggestions.
They sell cars everywhere.
But not all countries allow free battery, alternator, or code checks.
Power steering quit? Is this electric? I’m not sure why the battery is suspect but worth checking. As has been said many times here, the crank sensor may be at fault. Heats up, fails. Cools off works fine.
Since all the warning lights went on it seems unlikely it was a power failure. I’d say get it to a shop that has a more comprehensive code reader. Something shut down the engine, and more likely than not it’s a sensor fault. Maybe the sensor is OK and the wiring failed, maybe the sensor went bad.
Some good suggestions there, I only thought of the power because I had a similar thing happen to me on an Audi - turned out it didn’t have enough power to run the body control module, which causes odd faults - but that didn’t recover after half an hour so probably a red herring.
Good call on the temperature bing, sound very close to what happened.
Off to the dealer for a more accurate scan of the fault codes I think.
Thanks for all your suggestions.
My Corolla conked out a couple of times
- One of the battery connectors was loose, discovered I could easily rotate it on the post.
- The wire between the alternator and the battery had a faulty wire splice.
The second one would usually turn on the check engine light. Or some kind of warning light. But the first one, that might not be discovered until the engine stopped running. I’m guessing it is something like that, battery kaput, faulty connections, or not being charged properly. My diyer test for battery and alternator: Before first start of the day the battery should measure about 12.6 volts; then immediately after starting engine, 13.5 to 15.5 volts.