When your car breaks down, it can be very frustrating, and what often makes it worse is not knowing why.
You can narrow down the cause of a car breakdown to the 10 most common. Missing car keys, flat tyres, a dead battery or alternator, or electrical problems can cause a breakdown.
Besides those, the same can also happen due to a failed manual clutch, lack of fuel, using the wrong fuel, overheating, or a faulty immobiliser that's preventing your car from running.
In this guide, we’ll briefly explore each of these 10 glitches and how they can lead to your car breaking down.
What Causes a Car to Break Down?
Before we dive into the most common car breakdown problems and causes, let's be clear about what a car breakdown is.
Generally speaking, a breakdown is when a car suffers a severe electrical or mechanical fault that stops it from working safely, assuming you can get it to move at all.
As you might already know, there is a long laundry list of problems that can befall your car. With most of them, at least, you’ll be able to drive your vehicle to the workshop to get it sorted out.
With a breakdown, however, you’re going to need a tow truck to help you out. Whether your car is in the garage or on the side of a busy highway, that thing isn’t getting anywhere without any help.
Some causes of car breakdowns are entirely avoidable by keeping your vehicle well-maintained. Others are just bad luck and will happen even to the best of us who drive the most well-oiled cars on the road.
What Are the 10 Most Common Causes of Car Breakdown?
There are plenty of causes of car breakdowns, some worse than others. This section will look at the top 10 car breakdown reasons that most regular drivers on Aussie streets will likely experience.
1. No Keys
Let’s kick this list off with a breakdown reason that’s just purely about bad luck: losing or not having your car keys with you.
Yes, we know that we said the causes of car breakdowns are severe electrical and mechanical failures. Well, perhaps we can consider a missing key a mechanical failure since it prevents you from cranking the engine.
Whatever way you want to categorise it, a lack of a key in the ignition will stop your car from functioning.
2. Flat Tyres
Another extremely common reason for an auto breakdown is having one or more flat tyres. If you’re lucky, you’ll only have one flat tyre to deal with. You can replace it with the spare tyre you keep in the boot (Let’s hope you have one of those!), and you can be on your way.
However, your car can’t move if you have more than one flat and not enough spares. Well, you shouldn’t move because you’re going to ruin your rims.
When that happens, you’ll need to either get someone to bring you a spare or have your car towed away.
3. Dead Battery
If you’ve driven a car for long enough, you know the pain of another car breakdown cause – a dead battery.
The problem with this one is that you never really know when the battery will fail on you. For example, your battery might have worked fine when you left home to drive to the neighbourhood store. That’s not an assurance that it will not fail to crank the engine for your trip home.
4. Faulty Alternator
This cause of car breakdown is easily mistaken as a dead battery. The symptoms are similar, but when you take a closer look, you might find that your battery is in perfect health.
A faulty alternator will prevent the car’s electrical system from working despite a healthy battery. No electrical power means nothing works, not even the gas engine.
5. Electrical Problems
Of course, the same can also happen if your car has any other electrical problems. For example, short circuits, loose wire harnesses, and broken cables can all cause your car’s electrical system to shut down.
The risk of an electrical problem causing a breakdown is much more significant these days. That’s because newer models are much more reliant on electronic and electrical components.
6. Manual Transmission
Cars with a manual transmission face an additional reason they might break down. More specifically, the clutch is the component that could fail and prevent the vehicle from switching gears.
When that happens, there’s pretty much no other solution than getting a tow to the nearest workshop as soon as possible.
7. No More Fuel
This cause is pretty straightforward: no fuel means the car simply will not run. But, of course, there are two reasons this might happen: not enough fuel was filled into the tank, or there’s a fuel leak that drained all the fuel out without you noticing.
Running out of fuel is inconvenient, but it doesn’t cost much to make it right. Worst-case scenario: you’ll have to walk to a petrol station, fill a bottle with fuel, and walk back to your car. The only thing it’ll cost you is your time and a lot of frustration.
However, if the cause is a fuel leak, then you’ve got a more dangerous problem on your hands that requires expert attention.
8. Wrong Fuel Used
What’s worse than having no fuel? Using the wrong fuel. That means feeding petrol to a diesel engine or vice versa, causing nothing to run.
The engines in our vehicles are designed to work with one kind of fuel and nothing else. So, when it doesn’t get that fuel, the fuel will not combust, and no energy will be created.
9. Overheating
When your car overheats, you should stop your vehicle immediately or risk blowing up the engine.
Overheating typically happens because of a failure in the cooling system. So, what we’re talking about here is likely a lack of coolant caused by a leaking radiator. However, there are other related causes as well.
10. Alarm System or Immobiliser
Last but not least, your car’s alarm system might be the reason why your vehicle mysteriously refuses to start or keep moving. Many car alarms are equipped with an immobiliser explicitly designed to prevent your car from operating.
That’s an excellent feature to have when you’re trying to stop a thief from driving off with your vehicle. Unfortunately, a faulty immobiliser will backfire and prevent you from driving your own car.
Learn More!
To learn more about car breakdown reasons and how to fix them, check out the blog at CarPart AU! You’ll discover plenty of helpful how-to articles for typical car problems faced by drivers like you and me.
By Ray Hasbollah