It happened sooner than I expected: Stranded. Stuck. Immobile.
Drove the car to the post office, turned it off, came back 2 minutes later, turned the key and . . . nothing.
Really nothing. Not a click. No lights. No power to anything at all.
Eventually, I called a tow truck. 90 minutes later, the Bird and I were back home. Good money is on a defective starter, maybe the solenoid.
To top it off, while trying to wrestle the bird onto the tow truck, the steering coupler snapped. This bird has a clipped wing for a while.
If the car “had nothing” and would not start, I would not suspect the starter. I would expect a dead battery. Otherwise you should have had lights and assessories.
Harley, that makes sense. However, the battery is about 2 months old and started the car only minutes before without effort. I suppose its possible for a battery to develop an internal short, but I’ve never experienced such a thing.
I did put a charger on the battery this morning . . . will be testing the whole starting sytem later today.
And the winner was . . . the starter solenoid. I jumped across it and the engine cranked over. $20 at the auto parts store, a little wrenching and things were back to normal (sans steering, of course).
What threw me here was the complete lack of power. I’m assuming I have a basic ignorance regarding starter solenoids (and electricity in general), which lead me astray.