2002 Elantra Battery Trouble

October 2, 2005 3:22 PM

I have a 2002 Elantra which will not start. I've jumped the battery, it ran for 3 days, and now its refusing to start again, in the same manner as before. I'm trying to remove the battery to have it tested, help!

I cannot for the life of me get the nuts off the battery. All I have is a pair of pliers (I'm a college student). The nuts are getting stripped by the pliers, and won't budge. Any advice on getting these off, then what to do next?

On the negative there is 1 nut, on the positive there is one on top of the connector and then another farther down the wiring. The one on the top of the connector seems to turn freely.

posted by mhuckaba to travel & transportation (11 answers total)

Usually under the boltish part (where the nut screws onto) you have an L shape (on the bottom part) you can sometimes twist that instead of using the bolt (ie just to loosen it).

Alternatively, why not jump the battery and take it to get tested on the actual car?
posted by viiviiviivii at 3:30 PM on October 2, 2005

At the risk of being snarky - use the right tool for the job if you possibly can - otherwise you run the risk of rounding/stripping nuts etc - which can be a real pain. Even a single adjustable spanner would make the job much easier and really doesn't cost much. Word of caution - make sure with whatever you're using, that you can't acccidentally short both battery terminals - the results are not good at all!
posted by prentiz at 3:52 PM on October 2, 2005

To avoid shorting as much as possible remove the negative terminal first.
posted by Mitheral at 4:14 PM on October 2, 2005

Spray a bit of WD-40 (or CRC 5-56, or RP7, or whatever the hell they call light spray oil in your part of the world) on the nuts and let it soak in for half an hour before trying again.
posted by flabdablet at 4:29 PM on October 2, 2005

And if you're going to need further advice about your Elantra, try these forums or this mail list. There is a wealth of experience available from real Elantra owners who know their cars very well.
And they all have free registration.
posted by Doohickie at 4:50 PM on October 2, 2005

By the way, you might have a battery problem, or you might have an alternator problem. I've had shops tell me after testing them that a battery was bad when it was really the alternator. It's a little bigger job, but if you can get the alternator off, get that tested as well.

And one last useful link: The Hyundai Service Technology site. You have to register and get a password; if the password never comes to your email address, click on the "Forgot Password" and it will come quickly enough. Once you're in, click on "Service Information", fill in the form with your model infor, and you have online access to all of Hyundai's technical data including detailed shop manuals.

To my knowledge, Hyundai is the only automaker that offers this information for free to anyone.
posted by Doohickie at 4:57 PM on October 2, 2005

Sounds like the alternator is shot.
Do like flabdablet says and spray the corroded connectors with oil.
And I completely agree with prentiz - buy a proper tool. Pliers should only be used on a nut or bolt as a desperate last resort. They will destroy a healthy hex so that no other tool will be usable on it again.
posted by Pseudonumb at 6:18 PM on October 2, 2005

I've been forced to replace a battery on an old Taurus without the right tools. There were no obvious tricks: I just had to be very diligent, careful, and above all patient. And I still almost stripped the nuts.

Any signs of major corrosion on the positive terminal? If so, you might consider using baking soda, water, and a toothbrush on it. It will neutralize the corrosion and may have some small chance of helping the bolt move. It could even be the problem if bad enough -- most newer cars can not do anything without their electrical systems, and the electrical system will turn off if the voltage across the terminals drops below something like 10V, which corrosion can do.

I suspect WD-40 will help (perhaps after baking soda ad water, if there is corrosion), but one note of caution: if I am remembering correctly, it is both flammable and electrically conductive, so there is a small (probably very, very small) chance of it igniting if you get some sparks. Which are not uncommon when monkeying around with the battery. Take negative off first. I doubt it would do much even in the worst case scenario of burning WD-40, but you never know. On rare occasion lead-acid batteries can produces hydrogen gas, which is quite flammable.
posted by teece at 10:42 PM on October 2, 2005

It sounds like a charging problem to me (alternator or something along those lines). Does the car stop working suddenly, or does it have trouble briefly and then stop starting altogether? In my limited experience, a bad lead-acid battery simply refuses to hold a charge, instead of self-discharging like that.

My car had a similar problem a while ago. I thought it was an electrical problem of some kind, and futzed around for a while with wiring, but eventually discovered it was just a loose bolt: one of the bolts holding the alternator in place. The alternator was wobbly, so the belt that drives it wasn't tight enough and was slipping, so no alternation was getting done. Easy to fix, once I saw it of course...

Seconding other peoples' advice: definitely get an adjustable crescent wrench / spanner. They're cheap (<$10) and they're much, much better than pliers for dealing with nuts and bolts. You can get a cheapo multimeter (voltmeter ohmmeter ammeter) for $5 or so as well, which can be handy for investigating dead batteries.

And be careful about shorting the battery. They're designed to supply a ton of current for turning over a cold engine. That same current can heat up a mislaid wire or something extremely fast. It can supposedly do so fast enough to spot-weld a dropped wrench onto the battery so you can't un-short it. It will also heat up the interior of the battery; if you're unlucky, the sulfuric acid will boil, and shoot out of the vent holes into your face, and you'll have to spend the rest of your life in an Andrew Lloyd Webber play. So be careful not to hold a tool anywhere it could drop across the battery terminals.
posted by hattifattener at 11:45 PM on October 2, 2005

I just recently changed my battery, also without the right tools. I found that any kind of adjustable wrench was pretty useless because I couldn't get the jaws underneath the bolt -- it was too close to the battery surface. The only thing that worked well was a ratchet, but that only worked on one of them because the other had the bolt extending too far past the nut. The proper tool is probably a one-size closed-end wrench, which is only $2-3 if you know the right size you need.
posted by smackfu at 10:41 AM on October 3, 2005

And there's possibly one hiding in the handy-dandy Hyundai toolkit you never noticed was tucked behind a flap somewhere near the spare tyre :)

I was quite pleased to find a kit like this lurking behind a panel in my Daihatsu.

If it's an early 2002 vehicle, and the battery's never been changed before, it probably is the battery - three to four years is the expected service life for a cheapo car battery.
posted by flabdablet at 4:10 PM on October 3, 2005