Another Starter Issue

[TheDurk]

Life is funny sometimes

I just got this from Amazon the other day, even with all the bells and whistles, no load tester


BLACK+DECKER 15 Amp Battery Charger with 40 Amp Engine Start BC15BD at The Home Depot - Mobile

Quick question, I tried to jump start with my civic , multimeter showed 14v (up from 12.4) when leads were on... Could it still be a load problem and nothing to do with voltage right?

Based on the pain contacts are, depending on your answer I may try a new battery and return if it's not the problem.

It's one thing if I was dead in garage and working there, but unfortunately I'm dead outside on the asphalt road



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Well, if you can observe the voltage WHILE key is in START position, you can do what you need. If with jump cables on it stays at 14 and without it stays at 12 with the key in START, the batteries are not seeing the starter load and the problem is very likely the starter and specifically the contacts. If the voltage drops sharply when the key is turned in both cases but starter does not crank, then issue could be the battery is toast and the wimpy Civic battery can't overcome the dead one and crank your truck. Or it could be the starter. There is no better load test than a live starter. I'm ruling out the outlier of a locked up engine, but that happens once in a blue moon.

To rule out the battery, take out the one that is there and see if you can just put the Civic one in there. It doesn't have to fit; you just need to get the cables on. Pos to Pos and neg to neg, of course. In warm weather, a good, charged Civic battery should crank our V6s. But it is important to get the suspect battery out of there for the test.

 

[amalik]

Well, if you can observe the voltage WHILE key is in START position, you can do what you need. If with jump cables on it stays at 14 and without it stays at 12 with the key in START, the batteries are not seeing the starter load and the problem is very likely the starter and specifically the contacts. If the voltage drops sharply when the key is turned in both cases but starter does not crank, then issue could be the battery is toast and the wimpy Civic battery can't overcome the dead one and crank your truck. Or it could be the starter. There is no better load test than a live starter. I'm ruling out the outlier of a locked up engine, but that happens once in a blue moon.

To rule out the battery, take out the one that is there and see if you can just put the Civic one in there. It doesn't have to fit; you just need to get the cables on. Pos to Pos and neg to neg, of course. In warm weather, a good, charged Civic battery should crank our V6s. But it is important to get the suspect battery out of there for the test.

Sorry for the delay in response Durk.

What I basically did was head over to Autozone in the Civic and picked up a new Duralast Gold for the 4runner since they are literally a 3 minute drive from me.

After swapping it in, the 4runner started up right away and the rest was history. Curse words and working on the starter on the asphalt road in front of my house in 80+ degree Denver weather at the moment are not in my future for now.

For extra measure, I bought the tester you linked me to for the hell of it (Gotta love AMZN Prime), and my old battery did test in the yellow color on the meter. So I could see the difference, I tested my new battery as well and saw how it stays in the 12V green section.

I kind of had a feeling it wasn't the contacts; I'm only basing that off of the forum here. Normally you don't see a 1 click no start on T4R reported with bad contacts, but rather multiple cranking/turn over attempts with failure, at least iirc.

The one-click no-start condition can still be confusing though, because at the end of the day it could be battery or starter or the connections of either. But trying with a new battery is easier troubleshooting than taking the starter apart (And if you have the load tester, don't even need a new battery to test with).

With my old battery being plain old Duralast (not even the Gold version) and a production date of February 2011, I had to be realistic about the battery life. I'm happy with 5 years on a relatively cheap battery.

I do have to say this experience was a bit of a stump & a learning experience as an electrical novice. The reason I say that is because the bad battery voltage did test out at 75% of charge @ 12.4V on my Multimeter. Voltage apparently isn't the only important data, the old battery was unable to hold/deliver any load or whatever yellow implies on the load tester. I'd say that isn't common knowledge, as if you Google 'testing car battery', all links I've read simply say to validate you have 12.4-12.6V on a Multimeter & nothing else. What's more accurate is that the 12V is required + being able to hold/deliver load/etc.

Appreciate your and [MENTION=120071]mtbtim[/MENTION] help & input.

Kind of off-topic, but... I am seriously considering returning the Duralast Gold and getting an Interstate from Costco; a bit cheaper (~$90 or so after tax) and 5 months longer of warranty (~3.5 years vs the DG 3 years), kind of hard to beat that.