Have you ever had your car just “dead” on you, you try to start it and it just won’t start? You end up calling a tow truck and paying those big towing bills, then to make matters worse the shop tech tells you it will cost hundreds of dollars to get it working again, is that true? Maybe, maybe not.
I own and work as a diagnostic technician here at Ace Automotive in Lakewood Wa and I can tell you from experience that if a few people knew a little more about running their cars they could save a lot of money. Let’s say for example you are driving at night with the windshield wipers and heater, lights and radio on and notice the headlights getting dimmer and soon the vehicle “dies” and now won’t start, the most likely cause it’s that the alternator has failed, not the battery because if the battery were to fail, the alternator would still hold power to the vehicle until you turn it off and then it wouldn’t restart.
You are driving for a while and the car just “turns off”, all the instrument lights come on, but when you try to start it, it just turns over but won’t start. First, it depends on the type of car this happened to, if it was an import like eg Honda, acura, toyota, subaru, nissan, mitubishi, the engine timing belt may have snapped (if it’s been more than 60 000 miles since last changed). ) you should be able to tell if when you try to start the engine it sounds different, like it’s just “freewheeling” faster than normal, this is bad because most of the mentioned import cars will costly damage the engine when the timing belt breaks.
If your vehicle is a domestic chevy ford etc please be patient wait a bit maybe 30-45 minutes and try to start it if it starts yay! But it will “die” again once it gets hot enough again, be sure to tell your local technician this valuable information and order all the parts they replace to repair your vehicle to let them know that you know something about the car too.
