earnestly apologetic to have inconvenienced those who posted to that effect. tho truly grateful to the others who offered legitimate guidance, for which i will most certainly look into all such recommendations. thank you; and again my apologies.
If you will submit this question again…with paragraphs…I will take a stab at reading it. Just use the “edit” function and break this behemoth into readable paragraphs.
How about taking it to someone besides some unreliable moron that works for a salvage yard? Like a mechanic. Without the life story in there, it sounds as if you may have a bad alternator, which should be pretty simple to diagnose–a lot of places will test your battery and alternator for free.
The alternator is the part of your car that puts energy back into the battery. If it has failed, it doesn’t matter how good your battery is; eventually it will be depleted and your car will not start or run. It may start if you jump it, but again, without anything putting energy back in, the car will die.
This does not mean you should immediately rush out and have someone replace the alternator–you need to have someone competent DIAGNOSE the problem, not throw parts at the problem and waste your meager resources. I would not continue to have the guy from the recycler help you. He may be cheap, but you often get what you pay for.
Best wishes
Make, model, year?
Clicking sounds indicates a weak or dying battery. Consider purchasing a new battery. Why can’t the car be jumped?
Who has possession of the car, you or the scrapyard?
Ed B.
You either got a bad battery or an alternator that isn’t keeping the battery charged. Its hard to keep a car running without ever spending any money on it or working on it yourself. A lot of us learned about car repairs through necessity over the years.
As far as the writing goes. Even those of us retired are not going to spend the time wading through excess extraneous material to get to the point where a junk yard guy gave you a junk yard battery. I remember in high school journalism where pages of an article were mercilessly cut down to a paragraph. Concise writing takes work and discipline but that’s what you have to do if you want anyone to read it. I respected that teacher because he drove home reality. He would have told me, you don’t have a wrting style, nobody cares where your grandmother is from, nobody cares where the car stalled, nobody cares how long it took to get a battery delivered and so on.
At work I used to drill into the younger group to always state the purpose of letter or memo and what was wanted or needed right up front on the first line. Then if you want to fill in after that with more detail OK but will be optional for the reader to read it. So simply starting with “While driving my car stalled. I got a used battery from a junk yard but now only clicks when trying to start. What could be wrong?” would do it. Lecture over but kids have to learn.
I congratulate the few forum members who were able to get through more than two sentences of that rambling, stream-of-consciousness post. Like Bing, I am retired, and I am always eager to help, but the way that the OP overwhelmed us with this unpunctuated mass of wandering thoughts is just not inviting me to read more than a couple of sentences.
leahk, TMI. In the words of the famous Joe Friday, “just the facts ma-am, just the facts.”
From what I gleaned out of your long narrative is that you need a NEW battery. You won’t find one at a junk yard and putting a used battery in your car can damage your alternator, if it isn’t already damaged. Walmart, Costco and Sams have the cheapest batteries, and the cheapest battery is the way to go, they often last longer than the more expensive ones.
I am going to defend @gdawgs
I don’t believe he was abusive at all
Guys, you have to admit . . . that story was pretty difficult to read
And that’s putting it nicely
I couldn’t read it. About the second clump of words I found myself just skimming and guessing that someone needs a new battery; not a sulfated dead weight from the boneyard.
It’s assumed, right or wrong, that the chattering sound is the starter solenoid due to a lousy battery or failing starter motor.
As a high school senior I was allowed an entire semester in English Literature to read Alan Paton’s “Cry, The Beloved Country” and write an essay on it. I think I spent less time on that than I did trying to wade through the original complaint here…
I gave up after the second sentence.
It sure sounds like a bad starter, considering it’s a Toyota with a Denso starter
A strong click at the solenoid often indicates a bad starter
But it also sounds like it needs a brand NEW battery
And it needs to have the charging system checked out . . . after the NEW battery gets installed
And it wouldn’t hurt to check for parasitic draw either
In other words, a REAL mechanic needs to diagnose the car
It happened again. I typed a comment, clicked post comment and it just disappeared???
^
That happened to me yesterday, in a different thread.
$30 For a junkyard battery? You can buy a new one with a 60 month warranty for $45!
You’re flagging ME for spam . . . ?
Well, at least you have a sense of humour, I suppose
Here you go
I would like to apologize on behalf of the cartalk community for the rudeness you have experienced here. A regular group of posters here constantly make it their mission to seek out new posters who do not conform to their “rules”. This site would be much better off without them, but the moderation is very, very lacking.
Once again, I hope your car is fixed soon, and you do not take to heart the comments expressed by some members here.
On a side note, you guys are hypocrites. You all flag me for abuse when I call out one of your “members”. Nice going guys, real nice. Try taking the log out of your own eye before commenting on the splinter in another’s.
(and if you are too thick headed to understand - reread the original post, you guys made her delete it because of your comments)
Speaking of logs and splinters, I seem to recall someone asking about a broken door handle on his Kia, and the only thing you had to say about it was to insult his car as “disposable.” Why do you get to insult OP’s, and others do not?
The OP in this thread was a long, rambling stream-of-consciousness. The regulars here take time - a good deal of it - out of their lives to answer car questions, for free. They save people lots of money, and help them ferret out mechanics who are trying to take advantage of someone who’s not as up on cars as our regulars are, and they don’t ask for any compensation whatsoever.
Wasting their time with BS questions (not this thread - but I’ve called other people out on that before) or with long rambling diatribes full of random statements that, frankly, no sane person is going to think anyone cares about or will be able to easily wade through, and from which it is extremely difficult to divine the actual question, is rude.
This may or may not have been a troll messing with us. There isn’t enough information to determine that, although a point in favor of that viewpoint is that OP deleted her post without bothering to acknowledge those responders who did try to find and then answer the question.
That said, you are also exhibiting signs of trolling. In the 3 months you have been posting here, 6 out of your 28 comments - nearly 1 in 5 - have been insulting, either to OP or harassing regulars for their perceived rudeness. A 1 in 5 unnecessary antagonism ratio is not exactly a stellar record.
At any rate, I absolutely do agree with @db4690 that it is not your place to apologize for the rest of the membership, and I’ll also agree that I’m getting a bit tired of you haranguing the regulars for their “rudeness” on such a regular basis.
Perhaps this guide will be useful
Let’s end this thread
It’s no longer serving any useful purpose