I own a 2001 Cadillac Catera with 4500 miles. While driving around yesterday for the fourth time in the history of this car (on inspection) it would appear that the battery simply failed. There was no warning of any kind the previous few minutes to few days. But you drive to the grocery story, make a
5 minute stop, come back and the battery isn't even close to able to crank the vehicle.The previous 3 times this happened my wife was driving and I was not able to 'play around with the car' before it got towed to the dealer (still under and extended warranty). But this time it was me.
The battery had enough juice to run the lights and run all the electronics (other than the ability to call out on Onstar for some reason). But the headlights dimmed to nothing on cranking and the engine barely grunted on turning the ignition on.
I am guessing that, once again, the dealer is going to give me a verdict of battery failure but I can no longer accept this for two reasons.
1) I have never before run into a situation where a battery goes from cranking just fine to no power what-so-ever without some kind of warning like weak cranking.2) I can't believe that Delco batteries are THAT bad (about to go on battery #4 in 3 years).
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks.
dave
ps. The towing guy first tried to jumpstart the car with some kind of 'standalone' jumper device that supposedly had enough power to start a dead battery by itself. It was not able to do this prompting the towing guy to say "wow, this battery is really dead". How in the world can you almost totally discharge a battery in a few minutes without generating a goodly amount of heat that I would think would be noticeable.