5,3 L v-8 169,000 miles, original starter, and battery cables, original alternator, new diehard agm battery,
I was having trouble starting my truck a few months ago , Turn the key and nothing, turns out it was dirty battery connection. cleened the connections. was not very dirty just enough tto prevent full contact.
recently had trouble again, this time it was a bad battery , replaced battery and had no issues after new battery,
In an unrelated repair, had truck in shop and had rear main seal, cam sensor seal and oil pan seal replaced and water pump and coolant reservoir and fixed leaks in ac system and had transmission fluid and filter swapped.
Truck ran fine after repairs.
Today, stopped at gas station and turned key and the car would not attempt to start. Waited 5 minutes and it started fine.
Drive home and shut it off and started fine, shut off again and it cranked slowly and fired off and ran fine. turned off truck and removed cables and cleaned connections with dremel tool wire brush, they connections did not look dirty. Cranked it up and it ran fine. I let it run 20 minutes to see if it would duplicate issue when hot. It started fine with no issues. I am worried about reliability and getting stranded.
What would cause the problem of not starting in this situation, Dirty connections? bad starter solenoid (wonder if it is getting heat soaked?)? a short? The truck does occasionally have a check engine light on which has been on for along time actually when i wanst having problems.
Best way to diganose?
Well in those cases generally either you got a bad connection somewhere or your start is going bad.
I recently had a similar problem with one of my vehicles, was driving me crazy. I replaced the negative battery cable and cleaned up the grounds, solved the problem. There was no visible corrosion. Might be worth a shot for about 15 bucks.
thanks. I will add that starter gets more use than One would expect since i think a check valve is bad in the fuel pump which causes the line to drain. truck will almost unitversally not start on first try. have to crank then try again. this issue was a no crank. Also i had some bad oil leaks from rear main and cam sensor and oil pan ( all of which are fixed), I wonder if that would affect battery wire connect to starter. I doubt that though. I'll let you know of the fix.