I should say that I know very little about car maintenence. I can add water,
> oil and of course petrol but that about as far as I go.
>
> Car is a Ford Fiesta 1.1 1996, done about 55k miles, manual gearbox. Here's
> the problem: up until about a 3 weeks ago it was fine. Then, I got in it one
> day having not used it for a week and when I turned the ignition it was
> dead. My immediate reaction was that it was a flat battery but the light,
> windscreen wiper and radio worked. So I tried again --> nothing. Left it 30
> seconds, tried it again and this time I got a clicking noise from, er,
> "somewhere"! Left it 30 seconds and it briefly turned over. After a few more
> iterations of this (with each attempt to start better than the
previous) it
started and thence ran fine.
>
> I next used it 1 week later and it did exactly the same, but again, I got it
> started eventually. Same thing the following week (i.e. today). I've also
> noticed that it also starts OK if I leave it to stand for an hour after
> using it (but not a week).
>
> I'm hoping someone's going to say "text book batteryoidernator" (or
> something like that anyway)? I'm going to take it into the garage and just
> want to avoid some bloke breating deeply through his teeth and
telling me
that I need a new engine, chassis and body, plus VAT!
>
> TIA
> Mark
>
>
Probably a battery or charging fault, but could be something running the battery down while parked or a starter fault or could just be a battery lead !
I once had a customer got me to check a car over because sometimes it turned over very slowly when trying to start, the eventual fault was a slipping clutch (his wife was trying to start in gear sometimes!)
MrCheerful