When it gets below 20 degrees F and my car sits over night I go to start it in the morning and the starter only clicks, it won't turn over at all. Today I warmed the starter up by putting a heater under it, turned the key and it worked. I can't afford to go and buy a new starter for a couple weeks so if I drop a little air tool oil or wd40 down the shaft would that hurt/help it at all?
sorry for the retarded question
thanks!
Justin

 

Actually, it's probably your battery. Every single time I've tried to diagnose a problem like that it's always come back to the battery...no matter how much it looked like it was the starter or solenoid or something else. Also, check your connections on the battery and make sure they're good and clean.

Rich

 

battery is brand new, cables are brand new, even hooked up a jumper pack to the battery and it did the same thing. I got it to work by warming the starter up.

 

It could be the starter. The solenoid in it could have gone bad. Be lucky, when mine went, it went. Worked fine to get me to the Mazda dealership. I walk back out, stopped working. That's when I learned "push jump-starting".

As per the oil, I don't think it'll do anything really. The bendix gear rides on its own shaft and when it gets the "command", it kicks out to spin the flywheel. Oil won't do anything, sorry.

 

I had this very same problem a week ago and tracked it down to a short in the ignition switch harness. 10 years ago I had an alarm installed and I think that was the actual cause but swapping the ignition harness with one from my parts car fixed it.

To see if the problem is with your starter or a wiring problem upstream check the voltage coming to the starter switch when you turn the key. If the voltage is > 8v then its your starter (solenoid), if its <8v then its your wiring above.

I was able to get my car to start by holding the key in the start position for ~ 15 seconds. It could be all at once or 3 separate 5 second turns. After that it would fire right up everytime, but still very annoying!
--Erik