We have a 2011 Honda civic and my wife thinks she left the lights on the car won’t start now. we tried to charge the battery and jump it but it did not start. how do we know if it’s the battery or something else before we buy a battery? Any advice or troubleshooting tips would be great . All lights in and out of the car were dead at first but then came on as we charge the battery but the car still did not start. We did have the car fixed by an auto body shop about two months ago and the screen that shows the radio stations etc. was not working I had to bring it back twice for them to fix it hopefully that’s not part of the problem here because the lights also don’t go off when you put them on off you have to turn the car off.
Before you spend money on a battery it should be able to start with a jump start. I would suggest retrying it making sure connections are secure and you let it sit for 5 mins connected before attempting it. Are these decent heavy cable jumper cables or really thin wired ones?
yep, if the light was on it went completely dead and will take a bit of charging before it starts
Update…we left the charger on it overnight and it started
A totally dead battery takes a long time to bring back to life. Thanks for posting back that it’s working!
There’s not much better than a free repair.
But, are you sure lights were left on as cause? You say lights do not turn off when you turn light switch to off? Does this year civic have a delayed headlight off function? So drivers can walk from car to house? I have that on our new toyota which I find annoying since car is in garage.
Cavell- If you read your owners manual you will see that you can change the delay or eliminate it entirely.
in my jeep, if you shut the lights off before the engine, there is no delay. if you shut the engine off first there is.
I learned that here…
usually the inside light is the culprit with my better half
Rather than risk getting stranded it might be a good idea to do an entire electrical system check and maybe consider replacing the battery if it’s the original and combined with the fact that it was run completely down.