Durham NC - UrQ starting difficulties

[George Selby]

At 01:04 AM 9/11/03, you wrote:
> >I'm about to tear my hear out trying to solve a starting problem with my
> >UrQ. Sometimes it starts fine, other times it will simply click when I turn
> >the key. My battery is good, and when this is happening I can add jumper
> >cables/jumpbox/battery charger to no avail. The battery will not "pass the
> >juice"(a technical term) to the starter. If I mess around with it long
> >enough and hold my mouth just right it will turn over. I suspect that when
> >it does turn over it may be simply because the electronics have cooled down
> >enough to make the resistances right again.
> >


Sounds like exactly what you describe:  The juice isn't enough to make it
from the battery to the starter (or perhaps from the starter ground back to
the battery.) It could be the main juice (big cable) or the start signal
from the key switch (little wire.) Here's a couple of suggestions:

Clean the battery terminals.

Tighten any bolts attaching the cables to the car or the battery.

Replace the battery cables.

The starter switch could be fried (in fact, based on my experience with
Audi's, I would say this is the likely culprit, out of 4 I've owned, 2 had
bad starter switches, including the one I have now.  I have a completely
different switch assembly under the left side of the dash I use to run the
car, the "regular" switch just unlocks the column.) Try using a jumper wire
to start the car by applying 12V directly from the battery to the ignition
terminal on the starter (this bypasses the ignition switch.)  If you don't
want to get under the hood, you can jump with the a short piece of wire
right at the starter switch (While the key is in the 'on' position, jump
between the red wire and the red wire with a black stripe on the terminal
on the back of the starter switch.  Make sure your tranny is in neutral,
the car should start.  If it doesn't, I would look to the big battery
cables as culprits.)

Make sure the wire from the switch to the starter isn't loose on the
starter itself (it happened on my Audi 80 just 2 months ago.)

The starter solenoid could be bad, replacing it will probably mean
replacing the starter.

Lastly, the battery itself could be the problem.  I had a battery in my
truck that would sometimes start the truck great, other times it would just
click.  I changed battery cables, tightened terminals, jump started the
truck, everything.  Finally I replaced the battery, and I haven't had the
problem since.  I figure that I overheated one of the terminals while
winching, and it developed a internal crack  that opened and closed with
the temperature under the hood.

In fact I fixed a guy's car at work today that had the exact same
problem:  Ran fine, came inside, went back out, car just clicked.  I told
him to open the hood, and I saw the problem immediately:  corroded battery
terminals.  I went inside and got a Coke out of the cooler.  I poured about
1/4 of the 20 oz on each terminal, and drank the other half.  After about a
minute of watching the chemical reaction, I reached down and pulled the
positive terminal right off the battery.  "Here's your problem," I said.  I
jammed it back on the terminal, twisted it on tight, and told him he needed
to tighten it when he got home.  The car fired right up, ran great the rest
of the night.

BTW, I'm semi-near Durham.  I'm in Ayden, NC; just south of Greenville.



George Selby
gselby4x4 at earthlink.net