Hi everyone, back in October our car wouldn’t start we called AAA and they said it might be the alternator, I told the shop we took it to what AAA said. The shop said it was the alternator and the battery was dead. They replaced the Alternator and recharged the battery. The battery was still under warranty, I wanted a new battery but the guy said the old one was fine and just needed to be recharged. Well I was right to want a new battery because today our car wouldn’t start and AAA came out and said the battery is dead. The shop is closed today so we will have to go there tomorrow and be with out a car all day today. I think they should have replaced the old battery with a new one once it was dead and not just recharge it. I just hope tomorrow they don’t try the same thing and just recharge it again because I won’t put up with that again. Any thoughts on this.
Well?
One way to damage a perfectly good alternator is, to ask it to recharge a dead battery.
Tester
Hi, thanks for the article, I don’t know a lot about alternator or battery but the article did say… “Does this mean you should never use jumper cables to start your vehicle? Absolutely not! We carry them in all of our vehicles, in case of an emergency. However, when jumper cables are needed, be sure to get the battery fully-charged with a battery charger as soon as possible.”… The shop did charge back up the battery but I guess the battery never was recharged, it was no good. So I sure hope this didn’t hurt our new alternator.
Print the article and bring it with you to the shop. They should replace both the battery and the alternator under warrantee.
They need a failed report from the battery test equipment to warranty a failed battery, if the battery passed in October this wasn’t possible.
The battery may fail the test this time but we don’t know if the battery is discharged or if it is failing.
Don’t be held hostage by the warranty, if you don’t trust the battery purchase a new one.
At this point, I wouldn’t replace anything else until I did a parasitic drain test to see if something else is draining the battery.
Anytime a battery gets completely discharged it drastically shortens it’s life.
The exception are marine or deep cycle batteries. But most people don’t have those batteries in their cars.
I want to thank everyone very much for their advise, I was very stressed out over this and getting everyone’s help made me feel a lot better. Today AAA came out to jump the battery, he ran some electric tests on the battery and said it was charging ok and the alternator was testing fine too. He said we should have the shop test both the battery and alternator. I sure wasn’t going to let the shop just charge it up again. The shop said they would give us a new battery. Before we left to go to the shop I took video of the old battery and it’s serial number just to be on the safe side. The crazy thing is the hood latch is very lose and it’s hard to close the hood so I am afraid to open the hood until I can afford to get it fixed next month but for now the car is running good. Lesson learned…I think it’s always best to do research online before you go and have any repairs done on your car and for that matter it’s always best to research everything first online.
Any shop would be happy to do that for you provided you pay for the new battery and their labor fee, but they couldn’t do it for free as a warranty replacement unless they follow the terms of the battery warranty. I doubt the warranty terms allow a free replacement battery just b/c the battery isn’t fully charged, possibly b/c of a faulty alternator. The warranty terms require they do some more experimenting first to prove the battery is faulty and not something else. That makes sense, b/c if the actual problem is elsewhere, replacing the battery won’t solve the problem. You’ll just end up w/ a different dead battery installed in your vehicle.
BTW, a faulty hood latch could allow excessive hood movement that shorts out the battery. If you continue to have battery problems, tell your shop to check the hood latch to see if there’s excessive movement enough that the hood could be bouncing & touching the battery when you go over bumps.
The battery should never touch the hood no matter how sloppy the hood latch is. If you remove the hood latch and slam the hood it should not contact the battery terminals.
The “solution” is unclear, the article does not prove that a battery charger was not used to recharge the battery.
Were the alternator and battery both replaced under warranty as suggested? Batteries fail with age and use, the new alternator should be fine.
Hi, back in October they replaced the alternator, this time they just gave us the new battery.