Scary experience today with my '99 Prizm (had it for only about 2 weeks). I was at Chinese fast food place, stopped by to pick up my order. When I got back into my car, it wouldn't turn over. Within the span of 20 seconds, I tried about 5 times. Lights on the instrument panels lit up but the engine didn't crank.
So I decided I was going to eat my food in my car and then deal with this situation. But before I began eating (about 2 minutes after the failed startup), I tried to start the car again. Luckily this time it worked.
What could have caused this? On Saturday I got codes P0441 and P0446, I cleared those codes on Tuesday (looked up the codes, they appear to be emissions related problems so decided to fix it at a later time when i have more money). Other than the codes, the car has been running fine.
Not sure if this makes any difference but it was raining today and this is the first time i drove the car in the rain (wasn't raining hard, about a drizzle) and it was the first time i used the wipers on the car. The wipers worked fine except for this strange thing that happens...a couple of times, i put the wipers on intermittent then 10-15 secounds later, the wipers would be on low (non-intermittent). And the wiper handle thing would be shifted one notch down (from intermittent to low, non-intermittent). This happen not once but a couple of times. I just figured this is a quirk with my car (ok with me). But not sure if this has anything to do with the failure of the engine to crank.
Anybody have any ideas what could be causing my car's failure to crank and how i can go about fixing it?