What is a Car Starter?
As one of the significant components in a car, a starter is responsible for converting electrical energy into mechanical energy. It does this by turning an engine over until it starts working—if there’s not enough charge left in your battery to do so on its own, you need another method like using jumper cables or calling AAA roadside assistance.
It’s wintertime, and your car won’t start. You try to turn the key, but nothing happens. Your battery is dead, or you have a bad starter; how are you get it started? There are many ways that you can do this. The following article will give ten different methods for how to start your car with a bad starter!
Use another vehicle as an alternative source of power by using jumper cables between the two vehicles.
Another idea would be to use something else like pull rope around, so someone pulls it while starting up the car’s engine manually. If not available, spray some WD40 on metal parts where the cord wraps onto the crankshaft. Wait few minutes, so the oil penetrates and tries to start the engine.
Check for loose connections to ensure that all wires are correctly connected and not touching each other or anything else under the hood. If you find any, disconnect them and reconnect them tightly without allowing them to touch one another again — this could be a cause of your bad starter problem. If still no luck, then it’s time for some further testing:
Follow these steps in order until your car starts successfully:
First, turn the ignition to the “ON” position, not just to “start,” wait for few seconds, then try starting your car. This step allows power steering and fuel pump pressure up before you start cranking the engine (in most cases, this is enough). If it doesn’t work – go one by one through all other possibilities.
Detail Solution of How To Start A Car With A Bad Starter
- Connect a jump starter or another 12V source directly to battery posts with jumper cables to crank the engine without turning on any electrical accessories inside of cabin (headlights, fan/heater, etc.). Sometimes voltage drops too much under high loads, which could be caused by faulty alternator or wiring problems that won’t allow adequate current flow into batteries when everything else is turned ON at once. If the car starts after this procedure – it’s time to check the alternator (read further).
- If that doesn’t work, then try pushing your car slowly. The idea is that wheel motion will bump up fuel pressure before cranking the engine – otherwise same as above may happen if you don’t push-start your vehicle and turn the key in “on/start position.” So do not hit the gas pedal or go full throttle while pushing, but instead slowly roll forward at least 20 feet by putting the transmission into neutral first, then gently pressing the accelerator to smooth rolling speed with no brakes applied. Then stop again without any sudden movements of steering wheel etc., keep foot off brake but apply parking brake so that car won’t move on its own.
- If you still can’t start your car – it’s time to check the battery itself. First, connect a voltage meter between two battery terminals, then crank the engine for seconds (while everything is turned off inside the cabin). You should see about 12V on average under these conditions, anything less than 11V means that either there’s something wrong with your starter solenoid or cables leading to the starter are faulty and need replacement, or most likely one cell in your old/worn-out battery has died which will require replacing the entire unit altogether.
- If all steps above failed, try finding other electrical loads like headlamps, etc. Then, turn them ON at once while continuing the cranking process without success (and any further steps mentioned before). If your car starts after this procedure, the problem is in one of the electrical accessories you just switched ON.
- Try turning the steering wheel while cranking the engine. If the starter works, there’s something wrong with the power supply or relay rather than the actual starter itself, otherwise check the wiring to the ignition switch/solenoid again (see further below).
- If all steps above failed and you don’t have a jump-starter at hand – leave the battery disconnected for few minutes so that shorted cells could cool down a bit, but not more than 20 min though since leaving discharged batteries unattended can cause irreparable damage to their internal chemistry leading to permanent loss of starting capacity. In addition, batteries contain acid, which must be kept inside at all times.
- Meanwhile, you can start checking wiring connections to the starter solenoid, which are located under the car’s hood somewhere next to the battery itself, but before that, make sure there is no corrosion found on the post/terminals of your battery (remove them if necessary). If the connection seems OK – check the primary power supply wire between the ignition switch and fuse box for possible short circuit or damage. It supplies 12V directly from the alternator when the engine is running.
- Disconnect both ends of wires powering up the starter solenoid, then check for continuity with a VOM/multimeter. If you have 12-14V on one of them and 0 ohms or just a few ohms on the other, it means that power is getting through. However, the starter still won’t crank because the relay inside (which activates solenoid) has failed due to overload caused by too much current drain from faulty wiring. Recheck these two wires, remove corrosion if necessary and make sure there are no sharp bends in their path; otherwise, replace the whole cable as soon as possible before moving further.
- Now disconnect the wire between the ignition switch and fuse box (or directly at the battery), clean up both ends, and check for proper contact using multimeter also – should also be less than 100 Ohms. If it doesn’t, check your connector for corrosion and make sure all wires are appropriately crimped. Otherwise, replace this cable as soon as possible, or you will be sorry in the future when they cause problems again!
- Now here comes the most important part – checking to wire between ignition switch/solenoid and starter itself (see picture below). There’s a small black box located under the dash on the driver’s side, called PCM (Power Control Module). Since it controls the power supply system of a car so closely, there may always be some issues with it no matter how good quality parts were used during the installation process — follow instructions carefully:
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- – disconnect both ends of wire(s) powering up PCM; if any trouble codes are stored in its memory, you will see them now – check dealer service bulletins or ask your mechanic to help with these procedures. If no codes are stored, jump ahead;
- – if everything was done correctly and you still don’t have 12V on one of the wires, connect the jumper wire between both terminals inside PCM (see picture below) — car should start now! The problem is most probably in faulty ignition switch/solenoid wiring. That’s why I recommend checking the power supply cable first before removing PCM from under the dash, which takes some time since it holds many other modules together, so disconnecting each one separately could take forever…
- – if the car still doesn’t start – the battery may be so discharged that the jumper wire trick won’t work, or the alternator might not have enough power to recharge it. Try hooking up another fully charged battery with cables of the same size (don’t forget to disconnect this newly connected one once the engine starts) and then check for proper voltage on both wires powering PCM again;
If everything looks good at this point, you can reconnect all parts removed earlier. You are carefully checking each terminal connection before tightening them down properly. Try starting your car now but keep in mind there’s also the possibility of some issue(s) happening later. Since the problem was most probably caused by wiring/connector corrosion causing intermittent loss of power supply between ignition switch/solenoid and starter itself.
If your problem remains, how to Start a Car with a Bad Starter?
Fined out bad connections
When your car’s starter fails, it may be because of a dirty connection or corrosion. Make sure to tighten connections with the help of a ratchet and inspect for battery corrosion often so you can prevent these problems from happening again.
To fix an accessory issue on my vehicle, I went online to find tips from other people who have been in similar situations as me. In doing this research, I found out that tightness is key when dealing with faulty electrical components, such as not adequately connected by either being too loose or corroded due to exposure over time.
To bypass the relay in some cases.
You can use a screwdriver to touch two terminals. This sudden burst of power might be enough to start your car. We are coming up with creative ways around problems. It is important if it means saving time and money- this lesson was learned at an early age by many students who needed their parent’s help when they were stuck on how to get back home after school let out for summer break or what do I need before my big road trip? Luckily there are simple solutions like using jumper cables from another vehicle (or asking someone nicely). But sometimes, we don’t always have either readily available; that’s why knowing alternative methods such as sending 12 volts directly through solenoid coil will ensure our safety even though we’re stranded off the beaten path.
How to jump-start your car
If you have a manual transmission, 3 steps can be taken before trying to start the engine.
First, make sure someone is pushing your vehicle starting with at least 5 miles per hour and achieved greater than 10 MPH for the engine rotation speed to cause it to turn over.
The second step involves turning on either the first or second gear and not releasing any clutch pedals until achieving desired speeds. It should allow the ignition key turned ON enough where rotating will cause combustion process causing successful startup if all other factors align properly according-to this guide provided by Tom’s Guide!
To Start The Car By Pushing
A traditional way of handling a car with a bad starter is push-starting. Push-starting functions even when the battery is flat and the starter is broken, but it only works in cars that have manual gearbox transmission – this being one limitation, of course!
Conclusion:
There are many ways to start a car with a bad starter, but you should know the problem before figuring out how to fix it. For starters, if your battery isn’t charging and you’re not getting any power at all when trying to turn over the engine, then that may be an issue of corrosion or something else. If this happens while driving on the road, try coasting into a parking lot to avoid accidents that could lead to injury. If there’s no other vehicle available for jumper cables so you can get some help starting up your car, push-starting it will work just as well in most cases!