Guest bastaad525 Posted October 25, 2003 Share Posted October 25, 2003 Anyone want to take a guess? Come onnnnnn... guess what went wrong TODAY. So far I've replaced almost every major and a whole lot of minor parts on this thing... and that includes most of the ones that could leave the car 'stranded'. The last ones were the alternator and voltage regulator which I replaced yesterday. Well... now it's the starters turn. I can't really be 100% sure, but I KNOW the battery is good (is only one month old) and I know the alternator is charging it (amps look great) but lately every time I go to start the car it will usually crank REALLY slow... sometimes if I turn the key off and back on it will crank normal speed, but this is getting increasingly rare now. Even when it cranks slow I can tell by the lights that the battery is good and charged... so it's not that. I've cleaned and recleaned all the connections at the starter. There is no corrosion on ANY of the wires that I can see. And, it's getting to the point where it's cranking so slow the car wont even start... well... THAT part I know isn't completely the starters fault... not sure what ELSE the problem is, but the car has gotten really hard to start lately in general, even when the starter cranks normal speed, and especially when it's cold out. Sometimes it will crank and crank before finally catching... and most of the time after it DOES catch if I'm not holding the throttle open enough to hold the revs at at least 1500rpm it will die immediately... this can happen when it's cold or warm but is much worse when it's cold... I have to hold the revs up for at least 10 seconds or it will just die. Anyways... it's not anything major or anything... but damn... it really has become an everyday thing now that SOMETHING will go wrong or have to be replaced on the damn thing. Really getting annoying. I guess the good part is that there are very few parts left that I can replace! The next one that I'm worried about and will probably replace soon, hopefully before it fails, is the oil pump. It looked good when we had it out of the engine, but I dont trust anything on this car anymore... And there's also the heater core... I"m betting money this thing explodes any day now. If I get some time today I'm probably going to cut and plug the hoses that go to it. And it's anyones guess how long the fuel pump may or may not last.... Seriously though... this is really getting funny. Through no choice of my own, now about 75-85% of the mechanical/electrical parts on this car are new or rebuilt. And I'm still broke and with a car that is only drivable about 30% of the time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Nic-Rebel450CA Posted October 25, 2003 Share Posted October 25, 2003 Do you have a girlfriend/wife ? Have you considered sabotage? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bastaad525 Posted October 25, 2003 Share Posted October 25, 2003 Yes I do, and yes I have. I wasn't kidding all the times I said I would push it off a cliff... but I just dont think I could Its like... the child that is just a complete utter screwup... pisses you off at every turn, but, hey... that's still your kid, you can't help but love him/her. Of course, the more sweat, blood (there has been plenty...) and $$$ I pour into it, also makes it just that much harder to even THINK of getting rid of. On the days that it runs well... those are the days I consider selling it the most... but of course, then I say "well what if this is it? Maybe it will just stay running good and nothing else will go wrong?" so that ad never get's placed... and of course I can't try to sell it when it's fugged up... no one will pay squat for it then. If I had full coverage insurance though... it'd probably be up in flames by now... but I wont get that insurance just to do that.. now it would just look suspicious Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Afshin Posted October 25, 2003 Share Posted October 25, 2003 crank REALLY slow... sometimes if I turn the key off and back on it will crank normal speed, but this is getting increasingly rare now. Even when it cranks slow I can tell by the lights that the battery is good and charged the started can obviously be bad, but it could also be low amperage to the starter, specially since recranking would make the problem go and the stater is turning slow as opposed to not working. Why don't you try connecting the starter straight to the battery and see if it cranks well or not before you dump money into getting a new one. Also how good or bad are your battery cables and connectors? if any doubt, just replace them. As far as the starting problem when cranking, recheck all your EFI conectors and vaccum hoses on the engine, a lot of times one may be loose or leaking after putting an engine back together.... Most often it's something basic. Whenever my car is not running pefect, before I ever do anything on it, I compulsively recheck all connectors and hoses, even if they seemed pefectly OK the week before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
280Zen Posted October 25, 2003 Share Posted October 25, 2003 Better check the planets magnetic grid, maybe your sitting on a major convergance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted October 25, 2003 Share Posted October 25, 2003 Check the condition of your battery cables, maybe add another ground strap from the fenderwell or the firewall to the engine. Never too much ground. I had a bad cable that looked fine, until you took it off the car and bent it. There was a section about 1 inch under the sleeve on the cable where 90% of the wire had rotted away. Never that before or since, but basically had to check it almost like a fusible link to find it. Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bastaad525 Posted October 25, 2003 Share Posted October 25, 2003 The battery cables look brand new, and practically are... I put them on like a year ago. I replaced them when I replaced the battery last year, and I also replaced the battery again two months ago... so the cables have never been exposed to the kind of leaky old battery that usually seems to cause them to corrode. I'll check them thouroughly today for any 'soft spots'. I thought about the possibility of low amps to the starter... I didn't know if there was an easy way to test this. It made more sense to me too. I guess I can test it easily enough. I have checked and rechecked all the EFI connectors so many times... every time I even get the slightest hint of the car doing something funny I check everything. I have cleaned them quite a few times too. There are very few vacuum hoses left on the car, and the ones that are on there still have been checked and rechecked also. The only one I've avoided rechecking lately is the AFM to Turbo boot... I've had to replace it twice already... they keep cracking on me. But I've never had that affect how hard it was to start the car before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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