[TheOtherLeft]

I have recently had my starter motor rebuilt on my J20A after the throwout clutch decided to take a permanent holiday.

It's been running fine for a week or so now.

Since it's started to get cold down here my battery is showing signs of age and usually takes a few seconds to crank the engine to life.

Now comes the weird part.

In the morning (ie first start for the day) when I try to start the car all I get are the dash lights/radio/fan, with no noise whatsoever from the engine or even the starter motor "click". I then have to try about 5 times on/off to get it to crank over. It then takes a few seconds for the motor to start.

If I drive for 20 min or so, pull over then restart it will start on the second go.

I had initially thought it was the sensor in the gear shifter (it's an auto) that prevents you from starting unless it's in "P" and since there was a little play in "P". No joy there because it will start on second go even when I don't jiggle the gearstick a little.

I then put my jumpstarter on the battery and it started first go even after driving.

This weirdness is new to me as most other times a dieing battery would still try to start the car but takes ages to turnover, as opposed to what's happening now, ie not even try to crank the motor over first go.

Is what's happening definitely a dieing battery issue or could the starter motor be faulty?

Note: With the engine running my multimeter shows about 14.1V, after several hours being off it still shows about 12.8v.

Cheers all.

[lump_a_charcoal]

Poor battery connection?

[TheOtherLeft]

lump_a_charcoal wrote:

Poor battery connection?

I had thought that too. I cleaned the battery terminals and connectors with bicarb soda and no difference in starting.

[steak_knife]

You need a new battery, a lot of thing's want 12v on start & if your under that 12v, well, as you have seen, thay do wondrous thing's..

[dmould66]

ive got a very similar thing on my auto vit. ive replaced starter batterie alt all conections are good, still got the problem? if i switch it on then wait for a couple of secs theres an audible click under the dash then it starts fine. do you just get the starter click does it ever make a grating noise? ive never got to the bottom of it

[atari4x4]

how big is the bunch of keys on your key ring?