What did my dad do..... (distance honda troubleshooting for fun and profit)

Car: 2000 Honda accord 250K+ miles.. 

Situation:  Mom drives car hears a loud bang.. goes home passenger window drops.. 

What my dad did: bought a new window regulator and replaced it.  Apparently he left the car in the ACC position the whole while he was replacing the regulator to ensure that the windows and power locks would work.  He says he tried the window its all good..  Starts hearing a loud repeated clicking from near the battery/fuse box.  Then the windows wont go up and hte car has no juice.  He buys a trickle charger.. charges the battery and the charger says it's fine..  Won't start.  I tell him to jump it from their other accord.  Won't jump.  Just gets selnoid repeated clicking.  Supposedly windows work OK now.  He says he checked all the fuses and they are fine.  

He wants to throw a starter in it.  The car started fine before he messed with the window.  So I'm thinking either the battery got ran down when he was messing with it and needs to replace it or he fried something else..  

What do you think..  I want him to take the battery to the store to get it load tested.. 

is it cold where mom and dad live?   because cold will make a sick battery dead.

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Philadelphia.. not that cold.  

I agree with battery diagnosis. Many of the newer chargers won't really charge a dead or almost dead battery as they won't  accept much charge and the chargers are trying to be "smart".  While he's at it I bet it could benefit from cleaning the battery terminals and the main grounds. 

also, possible the battery grew an internal short.  if dad is mechanically inclined and understands stuff, i'd ask him to do the following:

• disconnect both battery cables and remove battery from dead car.
• hook jumper cables to battery cables of battery-less dead car 
• hook other end of jumper cables to good car
• try to start dead car

if it starts, that's confirmation that dead car's battery is internally berkeleyered.

Solenoid clicking would really, really seem to indicate a deceased battery.  Replace current battery with known good battery and try again to start it.

Edit:  With the battery off the charger for at least an hour or two, put a voltmeter on it and see what the no load voltage is.  It needs to be north of 12v.  Not as good as load testing, obviously, but a number less than 12v. is going to indicate a need for a new battery.

1988RedT2 said:

Solenoid clicking would really, really seem to indicate a deceased battery.  Replace current battery with known good battery and try again to start it.

yeah, that's probably a less-risky way to do what i was getting at.

Dad is on his way to the boys of pep for a load test on the battery.

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

Of course, the age of both items here may be relevant.  How old is the battery?  Anything older than four years makes it the prime suspect.  Of course, the starter may have 250k miles on it and be old enough to have fathered many of you, so bad starter/solenoid is entirely believeable.   It's just that these things usually boil down to "what was the last thing you did to it before it got berkeleyed?" and that points to battery.  But there is such a thing as coincidence, so could be starter/solenoid.

Do be a sweetheart and let us know what those boys find out?

You can always load test it yourself by putting a volt meter across it and having your assistant try to start it.

Cars are harder to successfully jump from dead than most people realize. I've seen it take a car plus a jump pack before, clamps are lossy, grounds can be hard to find, yadda yadda

If I lived closer, I'd go over and fix it for him..  kinda hard being 1k miles away.

confirmed.. Battery has bad cell, only flakes when pushed.  

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

T=0:00 FbC posts question with pretty confident answer included

T=0:08 FbC's pretty confident answer is seconded and thirded

T=2:59 FbC posts confirmation of original diagnosis.

Heat in the summer is going to damage the battery, lowering the CCA. Cold in the winter demands more from the battery to start the car. That's when you see them fail.