I have a certified pre-owned 2012 CR/V. It's been well maintained and yet I occasionally have trouble starting it. On roughly half a dozen times now I've found the battery drained enough that the starter can't turn over, but there's no apparent pattern to why it happens.

The very first time it happened was just a week or two after I bought the car. I have a plug-in charger so I charged up the battery & brought it back to the dealer I bought it from. They tested the battery and claimed there was nothing wrong with it. Roughly 6 months later I was on a long out-of-state trip and needed the oil changed so I found a mechanic that had good on-line reviews & took it there. They changed the oil & did a complementary multi-point inspection that included a battery test and they said that the battery was starting to go bad. Out of an abundance of caution & given the earlier issue I had I decided to replace the battery. That was about 3 years ago now.

About a year or so I found the battery was once again discharged enough that I couldn't turn the engine over. When I tried to start it the cabin lights, etc. would all dim and the dash panel pretty much went blank. I had to call AAA that time since I wasn't at home. They came out, jumped the car, and also used some sort of tester on the battery. He said that the battery was in good shape.

After that incident I decided to invest in one of those portable emergency jump starter battery packs. I've now had to use it three or four times to get the car going again, and again there's no apparent pattern to when/where it happened. I've had it happen after driving 30 minutes to my office, the car sitting the the parking garage for 8 hours, then coming out after work to find it dead. Most recently my wife & I drove about 3 hours to visit family, and when leaving their house after 3 or 4 hours it was again dead. That last time after jumping it we drove for maybe 10 minutes to a gas station to fill up with gas. We stopped the car to fill up, and it started up fine then without any problem.

I had some friends suggest that this could be dirty battery contacts so I checked that. I disconnected the battery and everything looked clean, but I still took a terminal cleaner & cleaned both the terminals and the lugs. The battery has still died once more since I did all that.

Each time the battery was drained it wasn't drained enough that the lights, radio, etc. would still turn on when we put the key into the ignition, but when we tried to start the car everything would cut out. Simply hooking up the emergency power pack and trying again is enough to get the car started once more. As I said before, this has happened roughly half a dozen times now in the few years I've owned the car.

Is behavior like this likely to be something with the alternator simply not charging the battery at times? Are there other possibilities?

 

 

I would suggest to speak with your Honda garage and ask them about SERVICE BULLETINS >>> 14-071 and 12-041

 

Thank you! Reading these TSB's it sounds like it may be exactly what I'm experiencing. I'll definitely be bringing these to my Honda mechanic ASAP.

-Bruce