My son has a 2003 mustang with the v6. It has always run well, until this evening. He went to start his car and turned the key on. At first everything turned on like its supposed to. When he hit the starter it went dead. We jump started the car and let it run for about 20 mins. We shut it off and tried to restart it, but it did the same thing.

It has an optima Red Top battery that was installed about 3 months ago. The only work done on it recently was an oil change yesterday.

Would the solenoid cause this issue??? I don't think the alternator would cause this, but I don't know.

Quick replies would be appreciated as I need to get it running before the morning.

 

Does it click click click when the key is turned?

Simply sounds like a dead battery caused by a bad battery or a alternator unless theres more to it. Could also be a bad battery cable or a ground.

 

This could go either way, best thing to do is to purchase a multimeter, check the voltage at the battery with the car off and then again with the car running.

Also clean the crap out of the battery terminals, I had similar problems with my 04, car wouldn't start and battery wouldn't take a charge from the alt, turned out to be a small amount of corrosion in the negative connection to the battery.

 

Great Advise, Meters are inexpensive and pretty easy to use, we'll give you step by step instructions if you want to take the time. Cleaning the terminals is always an important first step, they make a battery post brush-about 5-6 bucks at most autoparts stores, makes it a 60 second job. I clean mine every time I take the battery connections off. Btw, should be about 13.6 V to 14.4 V at the battery when running. The voltage show be the same if you measure on the battery posts themselves or across the battery connectors. (with the lights on bright).

 

Sorry it took me a while to get back to this post. You were all pretty much spot on. Ended up being bad connections at the battery. They didn't appear to be excessively dirty or loose. I cleaned them and reconnected them and everything is back to normal.

Thanks for your inputs.

 

No problem! Been through the EXACT same thing.