Dead Battery in a Southglenn Parking Garage: Jump It or Tow It?

Dead battery in the Southglenn garage is about the most common call we get from November through February. The real question is rarely "can somebody help." It's whether you need a jump or a tow. Those are two different bills and two different waits, so it's worth knowing which one you're looking at before anybody rolls a truck.

Here's how we sort it, and what it usually costs you in time.

When a jump is the answer

Cold does most of the killing around here. A battery that cranked slow on a January morning, gave you that heavy rrr-rrr, then went quiet, is usually just a healthy battery that got cold and drained overnight. Dome light left on because a door in the parking structure didn't latch all the way. Trunk cracked. Phone charger pulling a trickle for eight hours. A jump gets you running and you drive off under your own power.

The tell is that the car was fine yesterday and the weather changed. Front Range cold snaps knock the cranking amps out of a perfectly good battery, and I-25 slick mornings send our dead-battery calls through the roof. If your headlights still come up bright and the car almost caught, put the money on a jump.

One catch specific to the Streets of Southglenn and the apartment garages off Dry Creek: a jump only helps if a truck or a booster pack can actually reach the stall. Some of these decks are too low for a full-size wrecker, and interior spots are boxed in on all four sides. We carry portable jump packs for exactly that reason. If you tell dispatch you're on level P2 under a beam, it changes what we send.

When it's a tow, no matter how many times you jump it

A jump is a band-aid. It doesn't fix anything. Some situations, the band-aid keeps falling off:

• The battery that's four or five winters old and keeps dying. You jumped it last week, it died again in the Arapahoe Road lot, you jumped it again. That battery is done holding a charge. We can start it, sure, but you'll be stranded again by the weekend. Better to tow it to your shop and put a new one in than pay for three jumps in a month.
• Anything that smells like the alternator or starter. If the car jumps to life, runs for a few minutes, and dies while you're driving — that's the alternator not charging, and a jump absolutely will not hold. Same story if you turn the key and get a single click or nothing at all with a battery that tests fine; that points at the starter. In both cases you want the car on a flatbed to a mechanic, not a jump in the parking lot that leaves you dead again two miles up S. University.

The blunt version: if the problem is the battery being cold, jump it. If the problem is the battery being old, or the charging system, tow it. A jump on a bad alternator just buys you a second breakdown in a worse spot.

Hybrids and keyless push-start

These trip people up. The big traction battery in a hybrid isn't what died — it's the little 12-volt accessory battery, and it does die, often from a hybrid that sat parked for a couple weeks. You can jump most hybrids, but there's a specific jump point under the hood and you do not hook straight to the high-voltage pack. Wrong terminal, expensive mistake.

Keyless push-start cars throw a curveball too: when the 12-volt is dead, the fob won't talk to the car and the door might not even unlock. There's usually a hidden physical key inside the fob and a manual lock cylinder under a cap on the door handle. If you're standing in a Southglenn garage unable to get in your own car, that's the fix. Tell us the make when you call so we bring the right leads.

Not sure? That's what we're for

If you can't tell whether it's a cold battery or something meaner, describe what the car did — cranked slow, single click, ran then quit — and we'll usually call it over the phone. We cover Centennial and the neighbors around it, from Castle Pines down to Castle Rock, so wherever the car quit, give us the location and the symptom and we'll send the right truck the first time. More on what we do is over on the main page.

And put a real battery in before next winter if yours is pushing five years. Cheaper than the jump, and a lot cheaper than the tow.