my poor little car is almost at 179000 miles, but it hasn’t been doing well lately. It’s still running ok, but hasn’t been wanting to start as easily as it used to. At first I thought it was the battery, because it was very sluggish in starting like the battery didn’t have quite enough juice to get things going. Battery reads 12.3V though, which seems ok to me, and it’s only a 4 year old battery. It also sounded a little more grindy for a while when starting. Now, I have to let it turn over 2 or 3 times before it will start. And if I drive out somewhere, stop the car, getting it started again is a bit dicey. It barely turns over before starting like the battery has run down.
I’m thinking maybe the starter is going bad, or maybe I’m having distributer/spark plug/wire problems. The distributer and spark plugs/wires seems like something I can check out myself easily enough, so that will be my weekend task. I think I can also replace teh starter myself too, so that will be the next thing I look at. If none of that helps, then it’s off to the shop.
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Well there are a few things to try first.
1 take off the battery terminals and clean them with a wire brush and some baking soda. The contacts may be a bit corroded and that could lead to a lack of starting power.
2 When driving check to see what the car is charging at, should be about 16 volts or so. you have to check the battery under load too, most shops will do this test for free.
A thrid alternative is to put a battery charger
on the battery and see what it is charging at.
3. Most likely the problem is that the alternator is starting to go, probably a 150 dollar part and about a 2 hour job. But not that hard to do yourself. At least that is what the problem sounds like. Also check your belts to make sure that they are not slipping and not turning your alternator.
i do not think it is the starter, as that would make the engine not turn over at all. But you might want to pull the starter off and clean it, as a lot of metallic dust could cause the power to arc across the armature causing loss of starting power. Usually the starter is really easy to take off, what kinda car are you driving again?
thanks for the tips rick. had the alternator replaced last year, so i hope it’s not that. I’ll check the voltage when i start it up and have the battery checked out. the battery terminals are pretty clean (although I need to do some brushing on the other car).
The starter (the car is a 91 Accord) looks pretty easy to take off according to the instructions in my Haynes manual.