Hi All -

I'm new here, and come with a problem. My '04 Mini Cooper has suddenly stopped starting.

Last night, I approached the car, clicked my key chain, and got in, everything going fine as usual. The alarm beeped off, the overhead light came on when I opened the door, and when I put the key in the ignition and started to turn, the usual dash displays/lights came on. But when I turned the key to the starting position, there was just a click from the ignition switch, and everything went dead - all lights/displays went out, the engine didn't try to turn over... just a whole lot of nothing.

This morning, I had the car jump-started - it took a few tries off a battery charger, but it did get up and going. I let it run for about 30 minutes, and brought it to my auto parts store, where the battery tested out as being ok.

I ran a few other errands (turning the car off and on at each stop, without any problem), then got home. About an hour passed, before I got in the car again - and the same thing that happened last night happened again. I cleaned off the battery terminals just to be safe, though there didn't seem to be any buildup, and I had no more luck starting the car after reconnecting the battery.

Odd tidbit - none of the saved data (e.g., mileage and speed averages) were erased during the first outage, as has happened in the past with dead batteries.

Thoughts on what might be the problem? I'm really hoping it's not going to be an expensive fix.

 

Sounds like an electrical problem.