jimwe

We bought our 2002 Civic recently and I've been chasing a few bugs out of it but this one has me scratching my head. Every so often - usually when my teenage daughter has the car far from home at night - the car will not start. Battery is fine, all idiot lights appear when the key is turned on but the starter will not engage. Shifting into neutral and back to park doesn't help so I assume the transmission lockout is not the problem. Turns out the only thing that seems to resolve it is time. Wait several minutes and bingo, it starts up and runs fine. I have a Chilton's for the car which shows this thing called a starter cutout relay in the circuit. I'm assuming that this thing disengages the start when the engine comes to life. So this brings up a few questions. If this relay is bad, will it cause the symptoms I've described? What drives this relay and is that a likely cause of the problem? Any suggestions on how to trouble shoot this? It only happens about once a week on average and is completely unpredictable which makes it rather difficult to track down the cause. Thanks for any tips!

ezone

I'd sooner guess the contacts inside the starter solenoid are the problem, but it could be either one.

When the starter doesn't crank, does it still make a loud KLUNK from the engine compartment when you turn the key? (If it was a relay issue, the starter wouldn't klunk at all but you should (probably) still hear the relay click from the dash fusebox.)

Try bumping the starter with the key a couple hundred times in a row. Pay attention and listen closely....
(Don't crank long enough to start the engine, just hit the start position long enough to hear the starter engage and start to turn the engine.)
If it doesn't hit every single time, that proves a problem.

You WERE paying attention and listening closely, right?
What did you hear when it did not crank?





I might be tempted to connect a test light to the solenoid wire and locate it on the dash so the driver can see it. Drive normally until it won't start and note what that light does when you turn the key.

jimwe

Thanks for the reply ezone. No klunk to be sure. It has only happened once when I had the car and I didn't hear the click of a relay but I was at a rather noisy gas station at the time. I do plan to connect a light to the solenoid drive and put it in the car where another person can see it the next time it fails since I'm not the usual driver - thanks for that.

I had a starter problem in my boat two years ago that was very similar. Turned out to be a problem with the starter motor itself. The electrical motor guy referred to it as a "flat spot". In that case, rapping on the starter when the key was engaged would get it going. This problem seems a little different but until it starts happening more consistently it is hard to diagnose. In this case no one touches the starter motor. It just seems to work again after some period of time passes.