So 3 months ago i replaced my starter because of excessive drawing of current when starting. This morning i get in to go to work and when i turned the key it went...rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeee....


i mean not even the sound of engaging the flywheel...dammit! so i remove the starter but leave it hook up. i place it on top of the I/M and connect a jumper cable to the ground side, hook up the battery again to see if the starter teeth are coming out/engaging and they are.....hhhhmmmm


is it possible the starter doesn't have enough " ooomf" to turn the flywheel? I was able to turn the motor by hand so i know it isn't locked up. I am having a crank position sensor code (p1336) but that was there before and i never had a problem starting, well i did have a problem starting but it never stopped the motor from turning over.


I can't think of anything that would cause the starter to whine like that , other than the starter itself. I have a lifetime warranty from AZ so i don't want to open it up or anything...

 

The starters for are car suck....My original starter (116000 miles) use to squeel so I changed it for A AZ one...now once in A while it will crank but not start and have to be restarted. It will always start up after two or three tries...did you buy the remanufactured one or the brand new one? Mines been good and im at 146000 miles now. Maybe your battery is low.

 

i got the remanned one from Autozone with the lifetime warranty. Battery is also new/good

 

That sound you heard was the gear turning, yeah, but the armature hadn't "thrown" it to engage the teeth on the flywheel. Doesn't happen all the time, but it happens. When you took it out to visually inspect it, it threw the gear for ya.

Sounds like the starter's the problem. Worst case scenario you could have at some point in the past, filed a few teeth off your flexplate/flywheel, but you'd have seen that when you removed the starter.

 

Only of a very small area of the flywheel, not necessarily noticeable at a glance.

Also, it's much easier to see the flywheel on an MT car.. (starter out)

 

well i changed the starter after getting a replacement ( lifetime warranty FTW ) and yup, sure enough, it was the starter. I put a new one in and bolted everything up and it cranked very nicely ...

the guy at AZ tested it and said there was nothing wrong eith the one i took back...yeah ok

 

starters can be really funny sometimes, especially aftermarket ones. I had a chevy malibu that the starter went out on. I was at the store and i was told a trick once that if you give it a slight hit with a hammer it moves the gears so it will start. I did it and it actually worked so i could get the car home.

 

LOL, I hate to hear about the AZ starters cuz i work for them, I seem to noticed there were some variance on bad starters with reman, I noticed that AZ don't sell the brand new one for our Maxima, cuz that what i would prefer over a reman, since the reman is pretty much reused except for the electrical connectors are new and the copper core stator and the gears and also the solenoid are new. Just the casing is just reburished as I would call it.

 

well it happens, no way around selling bad starters, thats why they have the lifetime warranty