girl whose car won't start

[alisonmarie08]

Ok, Let me start by saying I know nothing about cars. But here goes, I have a 2000 cavalier that will start. It worked fine last night, but I went to leave this morning and it's snowing out and it just would not start. The dome lights came on when I opened the door and even the cdplayer/radio works. All inside lights come on, just not as bright. However, when I went to turn it all the way to start it up, it's like the car went dead. Nothing worked at all when it was turned all the way. There was a click then nothing, just dead. Does anybody have any suggestions. I am trying to deal with this without calling my dad. Any ideas? I would appreciate anything. If it were the battery why would I be able to listen to the radio? Help me!!

[maxwedge]

Try tightening or moving the battery cables, may be a bad/loose connection.

[adamhamrick]

if tightening the cables don't work then you probably have a bad battery. You can listen to your radio and your lights will even work with a bad battery because the amp draw is so low. Like the guy said.......check your cables and if that don't work, get the battery tested.

[jveik]

yeah it takes a lot more juice to "turn over" your engine than to run the radio... that little click you hear when you turn the key to start or "all the way" is just the starter kicking in, but it isnt getting enough power to actually turn over the engine. its just like if you had a 10 speed bike in its number 10 gear and were facing up a hill and tried to start pedaling. you can push all you want, but theres not enough power to make the pedals start spinning... almost just like that

[inatalonIXLR8]

One way to find out if it's battery related is to put a set of jumper cables on it and see if that helps.

[Rebel Racing 3]

It could also be the starter, we had a car in the shop the other day that the customer brought in after he had already changed out the bat. and it turned out that his starter was drawing so much volts that it would kill even a new bat
.

[silicon212]

I would suggest it's either battery or corrosion. What you describe (Allison) is a classic case of corrosion, but it could also be a battery post internal failure (the post, or terminal, breaks inside the battery) as sometimes this happens with side-terminal batteries such as what you find in GM cars.

[maxwedge]

For what it is worth this, thread was 8 months old.