Need help/advice

Jiyeon13 said:

Hey,
I have a 2005 Scion TC and before it stopped working I knew my car needed ignition coils and a new battery. My mom got the battery for me and had a mechanic put it on. She told me so I went outside to start it up and it worked fine. One day I just randomly went outside to start up my car and it wouldn’t start or crank. None of the lights on the dashboard came on, the lights in the car doesn’t turn on when I open the door, and I can’t lock my doors or do anything. I checked the battery to make sure it was on there right since that was the last thing I got done. The battery was tight and secured, so my question is what is going on with my TC? Will I have to sale it for parts or to the junkyard? 😞

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A battery drain is not serious enough (cost wise to fix) to sell your TC for parts. The posters are correct that if this is a one time situation, it's most likely leaving your lights on. If however you charged your battery back up, drove it, and it happen again, and you KNOW the lights were off, doors, trunk were closed, then you have a drain. First to check is your alternator for two functions, one that the voltage is charging 12v -14v. Not 11v, not 11.5v, no voltage below 12v. The second function is to NOT allow a voltage drain of the battery since the battery circuit is directly connected with the alternator for charging to the battery when the car is running and preventing the electrical flow from the battery to the alternator draining when the car is off (the electronic part is called diodes or rectifiers to allow the electric current to flow only in one direction). Usually if even one diode goes bad (I believe there are 6 or 8 of them) then you will have a voltage drop and it will cause a drain. This is usually causes erratic starting of the car due to a erractic state of charge to the battery.