joemartins

Relatively new to the SC430.

She's been sitting for about a week in the garage. No lights or other accessories were left on but the temperature has dropped considerably during this time (to the 30s-50s).

I tried to start her this morning and she would not start. I did notice that when I turn the key to on there is a tick tocking sound that is synchronized with alternate flashing of dashboard lights.

Is this how the SC430 informs the driver that the battery is dead? Or is this indicative of a different issue? I can pull the battery to test it, but I'm hoping to find out if this is even a battery issue.

scdroptop

iTrader: (1)

Welcome to the forum! Not too many NH owners in CL. Good to see you are driving it in the colder months too! Please take a minute and familiarize yourself with our top threads under SC430 you will see LOADS of very informative information from the experts on here that have owned these cars since new in mid 2001. Also please meet you new friend on this forum: The SEARCH function. Our newly designed search allows you to do advance searches within each model of car as well as sort by date, user and topic. If you are thinking of it...then it's in there!

Regarding your battery question...very very common issue. Have no fear. Get your jumper cables out.

Happened to me this week too. Same thing happened to me before as well. The curse of the garage queen! I have a new battery as well. My recommendation is to drive her more (no less than every other day or 3-4 times a week for at least 20-30 minutes, a few miles) OR get a battery tender to keep your battery charged.

Do a search for battery tender or I believe www.sewellpartsonline.com our vendor has one. I saw one this week at Park Place Lexus as well. Lots of garage queen and collector car owners have these.

Another option is to get a higher cranking battery like an Optima or others. I believe the red top. Do a search on "optima" battery as well...it's been discussed many times also.

joemartins

Thanks scdroptop,

I'm not new to forums, just to this one. Search was my first attempt and it turned up empty...at least the symptoms for which I searched. Great to know this is just a simple dead battery issue.

I cannot help but wonder if the alternating dash light sequence was by design. I've never seen anything like it before.

Thanks again for your insight. I appreciate it.

Kind regards,

Joe

Habious

Joe,

Do you have a LuxLink installed? I've heard the under-dash "tick-tock, tick-tock" sound from the relays in the LuxLink sometimes.

I don't know why it sometimes does this...doesn't seem to coincide with anything in particular...and it doesn't do it when I'm trying to do something LuxLink related (drop the top, remote start the car, etc)

I always though it was just something the LuxLink did sometimes.

mdfd430

yup, an intelligent battery tender kept my '02 minty fresh!

joemartins

Good morning Habious,

I'm not familiar with LuxLink (or perhaps I am and simply never recognized it as such). How do I determine if that is a feature of this particular SC430? We've only owned the vehicle for the past couple of months.

When I turned the key to the on position the tick tock that I heard was definitely in sync with the way the various warning lamps alternated flashing. And it only occurred when the battery was too drained to start the vehicle.

Btw, a simple 50Amp charger/starter got her running again.

Harold57

The "tick tock" noise you mention is probably the lights' relay turning on and off the lights.