Hello all,

This has probably been answered somewhere else but I couldn't find the exact issue I had with this vehicle and I am new to these vehicles to please forgive my ignorance, below is what i experienced and what happened, I will include all the details to give you all the most information.

I went yesterday (Sunday) to look at a 2013 Mazdaspeed 3 touring, car has 102,XXX on it but interior wise it looks like its brand new and exterior wise it looks great, for a used car.

I went in and talked to the salesmen a little bit about it, he gave me the keys, I looked the car over with a friend, I noticed it had an accident on the CarFax but it wasn't major and all the body panels lined up and I saw nothing out of place.

So I requested a test drive, went to start the vehicle it needed to be jumped, which is fine it had been sitting a little bit judging by the surface rust on the rotors, so we jumped the car off a jump box, the car started up perfect everything worked there was no flickering of interior lights or anything like that. so while the salesmen took my information and got a dealer tag put on the car for the test drive we let it run. idled fine, no smoking, no knocking, or ticking. I turned everything off on the interior as well so nothing was pulling from the battery while the car was running.

Here is where the questions began for me. I got in the car looked around made sure everything was right nothing was broken, put the car in first gear, let out the clutch gave it some gas and as soon as I did that, the dash lit up, traction control light, power steering light, abs light, DSC light, and I lost all power steering, but with the clutch pushed in everything seemed to be fine. I am not familiar with the quirks of these vehicles but when i informed the salesmen his immediate response was "The battery must not of been charged enough to run everything" I have never had a car do that before and I am wondering if anyone in here can help me out. Again forgive my ignorance I am just trying to find out if maybe this is just a battery issue and can be resolved with a new battery, or if I should turn and run from this car immediately.

Any help is MUCH appreciated.

 

If the electrical system is drawing more amps & voltage than the battery can supply ( being flat ) you will have the experience you had. Get them to put a new battery in it, or fully recharge the battery ( 6 -8 hrs ) then try another road test.

Sounds very common for a dead battery.