Weird Starting Issue

[WdotDynamite]

Ok so about a month ago, my car just wouldn't crank out of nowhere. I had a buddy come and check voltages and what not, everything was good. When we reconnected the battery it started right up. He said he seen a little bit of corrosion on the starter and he cleaned it....so we thought that was the problem.

This past Sunday, it did the same exact thing, the only thing I did was mess with the negative terminal it seemed loose so I tightened it all the way up.....boom fired right up.

Did this to me today, I unhooked the negative terminal and reconnected it and again it will fire right up. Does anyone have any idea where to start? Or what could be causing this.

[wetamup2k3g]

Your negative terminal is either loose or the cable is corroded internally. What's happening is the ground connection is no longer clean and has becomea point of high resistance, not allowing you to start the car. If moving the wire around sometimes gets you to a point where it will start, either the terminal is loose or the wire inside is nearly gone.

Replace the negative terminal and length of wire from the terminal to the ground point on the body with AWG 4 wire or better, and your problem should go away. Happened to me a year ago. I would move the wire around and green dust would spill from inside the wire; the copper in there literally rusted away.

Here's what I did:




I cut the old cable off and used the connection point on the body for the wire I just cut off. Haven't touched it since, haven't had an issue. Hope this helps!

[millerlite2224]

If that don't work I had a similar issue in my silverado and it was a dead negative cell in my battery it would work when I would move the negative terminal I also noticed that my battery would swell when I it happened so is try his idea first if not it could just b a bad battery


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[demond0d5]

if you're an audio guy you might as well go ahead and do a big 3 while you're at it! and try to use as big as you can get, 0AWG is what most of us use, or 4AWG (x2) is the same thing. this will help smooth out all of your electrical anyway, so if your lights dim or anything should take care of that by cutting resistance in half on the 3 biggest bottlenecks of a system

alt > bat
block > chassis
bat > chassis

[8thLS6]

That's funny I experienced something like that like last month, but just once. But it seems like my car still has a bitof a struggle starting despite me putting in a new battery before winter this year. Like Greg was saying could be the cable. I a even have 2 ground wires from a ground wire kit I got for my s14 t'd off from the stock ground. One goes to the intake manifold and I forgot the other..have to check next time hood is up. But the issue I had was I went out start the car one day, and got nothing until the 2nd attempt.

My neg post isn't really corroded so much, but my positive tends to end up that way, especially the cable terminals.

But when I first got the new battery it was a crisp smooth start, which I love in any car.

[kylecanthurdle]

replace the negatice battery terminal. cheapest and easiest route.

[demond0d5]

I would use a DVOM and check the resistance between your bat. and the starter then, not everything goes wrong on the negative side o.0

another easy check to see if it is high resistance is, if you know the battery is good, simply turn your headlights on and try to start it! if they dim or go out then you know it is taking WAY to much to try and engage the starter =]