Car Repair Tips - Why Your Car Won't Start

It happens to everyone at some point or time. You go out to your car after work or after school, insert your car key into the ignition and nothing happens. It can make your heart sink into your chest and fill you with panic as you wonder frantically why your car ahs given up you. You probably go through a check list in your head. Did you turn off your head lights or leave them on? Do you have gas? Is your battery dead or is it something worse?

There are a lot of reasons why your car can strand you unexpectedly and some of them are an easy fix, while others require some on site mechanical attention to fix. The most obvious place to start is your battery. If you have an old battery and your in a cold spell the sudden cold could have finished off what was left of your batteries life. You may be able to jump start it one more time to go but your seriously at the end of your warnings from the car battery and should get it replaced as soon as you can afford to.

If your battery’s not particularly old or you didn’t just go through a cold snap it might be a bad connection. If your battery connection cables look loose or they are covered with any signs of corrosion you should be able to try some easy fixes on the spot. If the connection is loose you should be able to tighten it and retry your engine. If you are seeing the signs of corrosion on the connection cables you can try to clean them with a wire brush or a tooth brush. If you have baking soda handy to put on the cables to clean with that should help. If all else fails you can pour cola on the connections and the acid in the drink will eat the corrosion away.

If none of these easy fixes does it your car repair problem might be more extensive than the battery. Other things that can unexpectedly affect your cars ability to start include a bad starter that needs to be replaced or a bad alternator that has died.
Both of these car repairs will require a mechanic so at this point you probably have to consider having the car towed to a garage. If you’re lucky you have AAA or you have towing on your insurance coverage for just such an occasion.

Once the mechanic has your car they can test the alternator and the starter and determine what is wrong with your car and perform the necessary car repair needed to get you on the road and on your way again in no time flat.

Neither of these car repair issues is extremely expensive as far as car problems go but unfortunately neither one of these problems give any warning before they occur either. But at least once you have them fixed you will have some peace of mind in the future.