I have a 93 Buick Regal, and I’m pretty sure the battery is dead. I feel like this is something I could easily do myself, except that I can’t get to the battery. In this car, the battery is underneath the windshield wiper fluid tank, which is proving to be pretty difficult to get out. Does anyone have any experience/advice in getting the windshield wiper fluid tank out?
My advice is get the car jumped and drive it to an autoparts store/shop or walmart. They will test and verify your battery is really bad or something else.
Many of these shops offer free installation of the battery so why bother fighting with it. Realize you typically need to bring back the old battery to place of purchase otherwise you pay a core fee.
So I’ve tried jumping, and it won’t jump. Does this mean it might not be the battery?
How did you conclude that it was the battery in the first place? Please tell us what is and isn’t happening when you try to start the car.
It doesn’t start. Sometimes it makes a clicking noise when I turn the key, sometimes not. For the last couple of months, whenever I would turn the headlights on while driving, the interior lights would turn off, and now, the power windows and locks don’t work, and the interior lights are very dim and flicker a lot.
Your no-start problem could be a low battery (doesn’t mean the battery itself is bad), loose cables, bad starter, bad switch, and a whole bunch of other problems. The issues while driving could be a bad alternator, which would be related to this. You need some electrical testing done on your car. BTW, are you sure the jump-start attempt was done correctly?
Shouldn’t the interior lights be off while driving anyway?
I think trying to jump it again would be worth a shot. By interior lights I mean the clock, and the lights on the dash that light up the speedometer and fuel gauge and stuff. Kind of scary driving at night not being able to see any of the gauges.
You should leave the jumper cables on for a while as the good vehicle runs to see if it just needs time to charge the bad battery. You could also give the good vehicle a little throttle (just to bring the idle speed up a little) to accelerate the charging of the bad battery. Sometimes these steps are necessary when the running vehlcle has a smaller engine than the dead vehicle. If all else fails, try starting the dead car as while someone else is reving the vehicle with the good battery.
No reason to believe a Walmart mechanic is any better than a Jiffy Lube mechanic.You trust Walmart to correctly diagnois your starting/charging concern?
One thread its trash the low end mechanics another thread its trust them to make a electrical system diagnosis,no continuity.
Your washer tank is probably held by some plastic push in “rivets” (along the seam where outer sheet metal join the inner sheet metal)pull the center pin of the rivet out and it will release the tank,you will have to deal with the washer pump hose and wiring,prepare to loose your fluid if you are not quick.
Can you get a good bite on the battery terminals with the jumper cables? this can be a problem.If your battery is in a state of absolute discharge a jump may never work,in that case its a tow or put a battery in where it sits,you may have to make a call to replace the battery without proper diagnosis because of the situation you are in.How old is the battery? can you make the replacement call based on age or how many times it went flat (they dont like going fully flat).