Nothing ruins a trip to the Square faster than turning your key and hearing nothing at all. If your car battery just died in Oxford, here’s what to check before you call anyone, and what to do next.
First, check the obvious stuff
Before assuming the worst, take thirty seconds to rule out the easy explanations:
- Are your headlights or interior lights still on? Leaving lights on overnight is the single most common reason a battery dies.
- Did you leave a door slightly ajar? Even a small interior light left running can drain a battery over a few hours.
- Is it unusually cold or unusually hot outside? Both extremes are hard on batteries, and Mississippi gives us plenty of both.
If none of that applies and the battery is more than three or four years old, it’s probably just worn out.
What a dead battery actually sounds like
There’s a difference between a dead battery and a bigger problem, and the sound your car makes when you turn the key tells you a lot:
- Total silence, no lights, nothing — almost always the battery.
- A single click, then nothing — also usually the battery, sometimes a bad connection.
- A slow, straining crank that eventually gives up — battery is very low but not fully dead.
- Lights and radio work fine, but the engine won’t turn over — this one might not be the battery at all, and could be the starter.
If you’re hearing anything in the first three categories, a jump start is worth trying.
Can you jump it yourself?
If you’ve got jumper cables and someone nearby with a working car, you can try it yourself — just make sure you connect the cables in the right order (positive to positive first, negative to a grounded metal surface on the dead car, not the battery terminal itself) and give it a minute or two before trying to start. If you don’t have cables, don’t have a second car, or just don’t want to mess with it in a parking lot off Jackson Ave or a dorm lot near campus, that’s exactly what we’re here for.
When to call instead of waiting it out
A dead battery doesn’t fix itself, and letting your car sit longer won’t help. If you’re not confident doing it yourself, or you’ve already tried and it didn’t work, call us and tell us where you’re parked. We’ll come to you, get you running again, and give you an honest read on whether the battery itself needs replacing soon.
If this keeps happening
A battery that needs jumping more than once every few months is telling you it’s close to the end of its life. Rather than calling for a jump every few weeks, it’s usually cheaper in the long run to just replace it. We’ll let you know what we see when we’re out there.
Stuck with a dead battery right now? See our Battery Jump Start page or call us directly.