We had an unpleasant surprise earlier today
when we discovered our brand new Subaru Outback 2017 would not start.
When I say it "would not start", it's not just about the engine :
nothing works at all. The car is totally unresponsive to any key / button input,
as if it was completely out of power supply.
We started by blaming ourselves for "probably" forgetting a light on.
That could have killed the battery.
That might be true, we don't know, but the rest of the story doesn't hold up.
We asked a neighbour for help.
Luckily, he had a jump-start, a battery charger and a voltmeter available.
He started verifying battery voltage.
It's ~12.3 V. Should be good.
We then proceeded to jumpstart the car.
Nothing would work. As before, not a single bip or whatever.
We then proceeded with charging the battery "just in case".
The charger was telling us that the battery was full.
Tried again after a few hours of charge nonetheless. Same result, nothing changed.
So the car is totally unresponsive to anything.
Since it's a brand new car barely one week old, we called the reseller, which told us that since it was a day off today, we should call back tomorrow.
We will, but now our entire planning is in jeopardy.
So I'm roaming the forum in search of similar situations, in case it would help.
I noticed 2 main threads for "equivalent" problems :
- One about failing relays. It's supposed to happen in cold situations. I live in California, the weather is very wet these days, but not cold. Besides, the car is in a garage. So I don't think it applies.
- One about failing batteries. This one would look like our problem, except that the battery is measured with good voltage, and we couldn't even jump start the car when we tried. Now maybe there are "protections" which prevent jump start from working, but since it worked for other Outback owners, there is no reason it would be blocked just for us.
I'm short of any other idea. So I'm asking into this forum, should anyone have met a similar fate in the past, which experience could prove useful to help this situation.
when we discovered our brand new Subaru Outback 2017 would not start.
When I say it "would not start", it's not just about the engine :
nothing works at all. The car is totally unresponsive to any key / button input,
as if it was completely out of power supply.
We started by blaming ourselves for "probably" forgetting a light on.
That could have killed the battery.
That might be true, we don't know, but the rest of the story doesn't hold up.
We asked a neighbour for help.
Luckily, he had a jump-start, a battery charger and a voltmeter available.
He started verifying battery voltage.
It's ~12.3 V. Should be good.
We then proceeded to jumpstart the car.
Nothing would work. As before, not a single bip or whatever.
We then proceeded with charging the battery "just in case".
The charger was telling us that the battery was full.
Tried again after a few hours of charge nonetheless. Same result, nothing changed.
So the car is totally unresponsive to anything.
Since it's a brand new car barely one week old, we called the reseller, which told us that since it was a day off today, we should call back tomorrow.
We will, but now our entire planning is in jeopardy.
So I'm roaming the forum in search of similar situations, in case it would help.
I noticed 2 main threads for "equivalent" problems :
- One about failing relays. It's supposed to happen in cold situations. I live in California, the weather is very wet these days, but not cold. Besides, the car is in a garage. So I don't think it applies.
- One about failing batteries. This one would look like our problem, except that the battery is measured with good voltage, and we couldn't even jump start the car when we tried. Now maybe there are "protections" which prevent jump start from working, but since it worked for other Outback owners, there is no reason it would be blocked just for us.
I'm short of any other idea. So I'm asking into this forum, should anyone have met a similar fate in the past, which experience could prove useful to help this situation.