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Intermittent car trouble

SageinaRageSageinaRage Registered User regular
edited March 2009 in Help / Advice Forum
I'm driving a hand-me-down 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. It's seen its fair share of driving, but it's been pretty well taken care of in its life. I've been getting this weird issue with it starting. Basically, I just put the key in an turn, and nothing happens. I get a single kind of click where I can tell that it's recognized that it SHOULD be starting, but I'm not getting the kind of constant clicks that says it's actually trying to turn over.

The reason I haven't really done much with it is because this problem is so rare and random. Over the past...9 months or so, I'd guess, it's happened maybe 3 times. And if I just wait 10 minutes or so, it usually goes away and works fine. However, it happened to me yesterday and again today, so I think it might be getting worse, and I should go ahead and look into it.

If I need to, I'll take it to a shop and get it repaired, that's no problem, but I don't want to just roll in with 'sometimes it doesn't start', and have them ream me for whatever thing they think they can get away with. Or, if it's something I can work on myself, that's cool too. I have a Haynes repair manual for my car, so I can probably do it myself if it's something fairly simple, I just need a starting place to work from.

So, any ideas what it could be?

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SageinaRage on

Posts

  • matt has a problemmatt has a problem Points to 'off' Points to 'on'Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    The starter's going bad. It will gradually do this more and more until one day it just doesn't start again. The click is the contacts closing to send power to the starter.

    matt has a problem on
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  • SageinaRageSageinaRage Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Forgot to mention - I'm fairly certain it's not the starter itself, since I had that replaced not too long ago, when I had an episode where I DID get the rapid clicks. It was maybe...6 months ago now, but I'm fairly sure I've had this problem before then.

    SageinaRage on
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  • stawkstawk Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    umm... alternator? or a fuse problem?

    stawk on

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  • Mmmm... Cocks...Mmmm... Cocks... Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    SageinaRage wrote: »
    Forgot to mention - I'm fairly certain it's not the starter itself, since I had that replaced not too long ago, when I had an episode where I DID get the rapid clicks. It was maybe...6 months ago now, but I'm fairly sure I've had this problem before then.
    Yea but if all signs point to the starter it probably is. Some dude with a razor told me that once.
    My car was having trouble starting recently and I couldn't figure it out for the life of me.
    All signs pointed to the battery but the battery was new.

    Took it in after getting frustrated and turns out it was the battery.
    Tested it and everything. Thing was dead.

    Mmmm... Cocks... on
  • powersspowerss Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    It might not be the starter, it could be the starter solenoid. It could also be a weak battery not giving enough juice to the solenoid/starter

    powerss on
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