Scallywag
Well-Known LVC Member
Sar bout the newb quesion
My brother has been using my other Mark VIII I have because his ride is in the shop past 3 months. He has a habit of waiting until the last fume of gas before even thinking about refilling. 3 weeks ago my brother ran out of gas on the Mark(4th time he emptied the Mark) and luckily was near a gas station to push it to and call me to rescue him, again. I get there and filled it up but the car wouldn't turn on as the starter kept clicking like the battery was dead, lights were on but somewhat dim I suppose. A 15 min connection turned it on successfully where a 5 min jump didn't do squat. Figured all was well and we all went home.
The next morning my brother is texting me again that the car is dead, so I then took the battery to Advanced Auto Parts to test it. The receipt they showed me said the battery only had 230CCA out of 990CCA, so we left it there for a charge. We picked up the battery and all went well until the next morning when I got a text about the car being dead again.
After a 5-10 second jump, I drove it around to charge it and I could feel a difference in power than when I first bought it. A rough idle accompanied by a lag when lightly accelerating as it'll drop RPMs before slowly picking back up. The car has lost significant MPG as I went through half a tank(was full when I started driving) with only 35 minutes of cruising on 40 mph road while the console reads a ridiculous 9-11 MPG. I can sometimes hear a light fart when the car is sitting still, kind of like a "puh puh puh puh" which was never there beforehand, but I can't exactly say it's a misfire from cylinders.
Either way, I think I can attribute the performance to my brother's low maintenance impacting the fuel system and am prepared to tackle it tomorrow. As for the car being dead continuously, I remain uncertain. I will say that as I'm paying to fill the tank when my brother called me 3 weeks ago, the cashier told me that my brother kept cranking the car in a futile attempt to turn it back on for about 3 minutes before I showed up.
Can all that cranking my brother did really "kill" the battery or alternator from so much erroneous attempts to crank it on?
My brother has been using my other Mark VIII I have because his ride is in the shop past 3 months. He has a habit of waiting until the last fume of gas before even thinking about refilling. 3 weeks ago my brother ran out of gas on the Mark(4th time he emptied the Mark) and luckily was near a gas station to push it to and call me to rescue him, again. I get there and filled it up but the car wouldn't turn on as the starter kept clicking like the battery was dead, lights were on but somewhat dim I suppose. A 15 min connection turned it on successfully where a 5 min jump didn't do squat. Figured all was well and we all went home.
The next morning my brother is texting me again that the car is dead, so I then took the battery to Advanced Auto Parts to test it. The receipt they showed me said the battery only had 230CCA out of 990CCA, so we left it there for a charge. We picked up the battery and all went well until the next morning when I got a text about the car being dead again.
After a 5-10 second jump, I drove it around to charge it and I could feel a difference in power than when I first bought it. A rough idle accompanied by a lag when lightly accelerating as it'll drop RPMs before slowly picking back up. The car has lost significant MPG as I went through half a tank(was full when I started driving) with only 35 minutes of cruising on 40 mph road while the console reads a ridiculous 9-11 MPG. I can sometimes hear a light fart when the car is sitting still, kind of like a "puh puh puh puh" which was never there beforehand, but I can't exactly say it's a misfire from cylinders.
Either way, I think I can attribute the performance to my brother's low maintenance impacting the fuel system and am prepared to tackle it tomorrow. As for the car being dead continuously, I remain uncertain. I will say that as I'm paying to fill the tank when my brother called me 3 weeks ago, the cashier told me that my brother kept cranking the car in a futile attempt to turn it back on for about 3 minutes before I showed up.
Can all that cranking my brother did really "kill" the battery or alternator from so much erroneous attempts to crank it on?
