Hi I am new to this & decided to join as my wife has a fiat 500, & I have recently bought a Fiat Panda 1.2 2004 which I was pleased with up until this morning when I jumped in to take the dog for a walk, turned the key and nothing happened!
There is no turning over of the engine at all, the clock seems to have lost its date & time and I got a few error messages the first came up as steering failure but that cleared and then an airbag error came up.
I looked at the battery and then indicator seemed to be ok and it has been fine up until this morning.
I have decided to charge it anyway as I have limited mechanical knowledge and am keeping my fingers crossed that this will solve the problem?
Any advice will be appreciated.
Unfortunately I do not have homestart on the AA & my garage is a few miles away so am quite stuffed!

Do you have a multimeter at all?
It does sound like a flat battery with all the clocks losing time and date so I would check with getting the battery checked and maybe also the alternator. Most car places offer this check for free.
Could also be possible that you left something on or something is draining the battery? Again a multimeter would be handy to check.

Hi,
as stated,
sounds like battery trouble = a multimeter would help !,

try this;

climb in car shut door make sure EVERYTHING is switched off,
then put key in ignition,

1, turn to the MAR position ( just before starter) ,
2, watch to see all the "idiot lights" go ON then OFF

leaving the OIL + Battery + Handbrake lights LIT,


has the fuel gauge gone up an rested at a figure?,

3, then twist the key to the starter phase - do the BATTERY + OIL symbols DIM..??

if they DO dim then you've almost certainly got a poor battery,

EDIT,
it may be sensible to swap batterys with the 500 at this point just to see if the 500 is dead with the Panda battery and Vice-versa.!!

It's also worth a look on EBAY , you can get a Quality BOSCH battery delivered overnight for @ £43,
I've had 2 for my cars - can't say a bad word.. TOP service,
Charlie

cool_dood01 said:

Do you have a multimeter at all?
It does sound like a flat battery with all the clocks losing time and date so I would check with getting the battery checked and maybe also the alternator. Most car places offer this check for free.
Could also be possible that you left something on or something is draining the battery? Again a multimeter would be handy to check.

Click to expand...

hi don't have access to meter but getting a new battery. Cheers for the advice

steveissy said:

hi don't have access to meter but getting a new battery. Cheers for the advice

Click to expand...

3 days later..,
I would've had a new battery in @ 2 days,

Charlie

Hi thanks again for your help, I tried some of the things and the lights dimmed, I tried to charge the battery but it wouldn't take any charge so that was when I decided to take a chance and order a new one. I tried to add this to my reply but had problems with the pc crashing so I only got a brief response in. These forums are really good for getting help when you are not overly mechanical.

Forgot to mention the car is now back to the land of the living with its new battery

Glad you got it going again o.k.,

the lights dimming pointed to a poor battery,

if they didn't dim - more likely a connection issue,
Charlie