Your car, truck, or UV needs several things to start. It needs a functional alternator and charged battery. It needs air and fuel in the combustion chamber. It needs a starter motor to start the larger motor. If the latter has gone bad, which you can do if you have driven your vehicle 100,000 miles or more, Journey Auto Repair advises your automobile will experience one or more of the following five signs of a bad starter. The fifth sign is also an indication of more serious engine damage.
1. Click, Click, Click
One of the most common things that happens when the starter is dead is your engine will click when you try to start it. You may be able to get the engine to fire up, but if you hear this ominous clicking sound, you should have the starter tested right away. This ensures you don’t end up stuck because of the next symptom listed below.
2. Dead Engine
You may also hear a continual clicking noise and be unable to start your engine. This is because, again, the engine relies on the starter motor to fire it up. If this doesn’t happen, it doesn’t matter how many of the other things fall into place. You can have a functioning alternator and battery and plenty of fuel in the automobile but it still won’t start.
3. Working Lights
One way to determine if the problem is the starter is to check your vehicle’s lights. If the alternator and battery are working the way they need to be, you will have lights. Jump-starting your automobile isn’t going to get it started because the battery is charged. If the battery were dead, you wouldn’t have interior or exterior lights working on your automobile.
4. Hot Odors/Smoke
Another sign the problem is your starter is if you begin to smell burning odors and see smoke wafting out from underneath the hood. This happens if you try in vain to start your automobile several times. Rather than getting your vehicle started, the only thing that happens is the starter motor overheats.
5. Oil on the Starter
Finally, as we mentioned above the starter can die because of a more serious engine problem. The starter is located underneath the left cylinder bank in your engine. If the cylinder bank starts to leak, oil will soak the starter and kill it.
Call Journey Auto Repair in New Hope, MN, today if you believe your starter is going bad. We’d be happy to test the starter and replacement if necessary.