I Just Put a New Battery in My Car and it Still Won't Start

My friend has an old car - a 97 Toyota 4Runner. We've had a lot of "fun" trying to keep it up and running. The most recent problem developed after she let the car sit for a few weeks without driving it.

She came back from a short trip to the Bahamas to find that the car wouldn't start. Battery dead. Uh oh.

Simple solution, though. We picked up a new battery at Costco. If her battery was new, we might have thought about jumping it and re-charging it... but she had no clue when the battery had last been replaced. So, better safe than sorry and it seemed like a good time for a new battery.

So, we popped the hood. And the battery terminals were covered with corrosion and acid build up. I unscrewed the terminal post clamps and tried to clean them off as best I could. The negative terminal wasn't too bad, but the positive terminal still looked pretty pathetic.

I didn't want to drive all the way back to Autozone to pick up a new terminal post clamp, so I figured I'd attach it and see what happened. I did, and everything seemed to work fine... until later that evening.

I had gone home, and she called to say the car wouldn't start. It was real bizarre. A turn of the key produced a single click, and the engine didn't turn over at all. The lights in the car came on, so the battery wasn't totally dead. She tried to get a jump from her brother, and this didn't help either.

My immediate thought was, I should have changed that terminal post clamp the first go around. I wasn't 100% positive that it was the problem, but it seemed like a logical and plausible diagnosis. In the morning, we ran to autozone, picked up the new part, and I installed a new terminal post clamp for the postive terminal.

After installing the part, the car still didn't start. Single click from the ignition and nothing else. I went back under the hood, fiddled with the connections a bit, and then magically the car started. No problems since.

So, if your car won't start and you're sure that it's not a dead battery... try checking the battery terminals. If the terminals or the clamps are covered with some corrosion, it may prevent the car from getting enough amperage to actually start the car. Thoroughly cleaning the terminals or replacing the clamps might help clear up the problem.