Sorry for another thread. Really - I am having THE worst year. Ever.

So there is a whole other thread from my starter/clutch saga further down....but here is the latest crisis. With a brand new starter bought and installed by a shop for $400 on October 23 - one month ago, I decided I had to wait until after my trip down from NC to FL to deal with the slipping clutch. Plus I just needed a break from the car disasters and expenses. I got on the interstate and - you guessed it - half-way through the 1500-mile trip, more problems. The clutch and lack of power / poor acceleration was something I learned to work around. What I wasn't prepared for was another starting problem. When I had pulled over for gas and food in the middle of nowhere, the car made a horrible grinding noise very similar (if not identical) to the noise it made when the old starter was dying. Except this was louder and more alarming. I got 2 more starts out of it and now it won't start and I am stranded with the car sitting in a place where it will be OK for a short time until I figure out what to do next.

After only 28 days with the new starter - what do you think? Of course this is complicated by being hundreds of miles away from the shop that I have the warranty on the starter so - whoopie! More fun. But I guess my question is since I had clutch issues already - is it more likely a flywheel issue rather than the starter? I am going to try and crawl under there and see what I can see but given how everything has been going, with my luck i will get it towed to some place that rips me a new one and that will be the end since I just don't have the cash for any more crap right now.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again.

More info would be helpful, what is your car? If you are fortunate enough to have a 5speed, with the key turned forward, push it as fast as you can in neutral (preferable downhill) hop in the driver's seat, clutch, shove it into 1st or 2nd (depending on how fast you got rolling) and dump the clutch. As long as your battery isn't dead too, she will start right up. If you do manage to get it going, even just once, make sure you don't turn it off anywhere except facing down a hill. You can actually go quite a while without a starter if you're clever about your parking. Hope you make it man! Cheers.

2001 Cavalier Base 5-speed manual 2.2 183K

Is it possible that the new starter just put on 1 month ago damaged/ruined the flywheel? Here is one reason I am so concerned. I am 800 miles away from the place that sold me and installed that new starter. They told me to bring it to a shop down here and have the shop down here call them first before anything else. So you can see where I could easily get screwed. What if they come back and tell me that the flywheel is screwed-up, and ruined the new starter? The whole situation is a nightmare.

But what I really need is more information about what could cause going from no starting problem to major/totally not-starting out of the blue within a day – WITH a brand new starter. From my limited understanding of things, there are only a couple of things that can cause the awful, loud, disturbing, grinding, no-start condition that I now have:

A bad/failing starter. A bad/failing flywheel (cracked, teeth missing, etc..), a starter where the gear is too far away or not deep enough when meshing with the flywheel, or finally a starter / flywheel that is not properly aligned with each other. Am I missing something?

Any help or advice would be appreciated, as always.

It just gets worse. After the car sat in the same spot from the time it last started on 11/22 at 4pm - for 11 days to about 4pm on 12/02 - the battery (which had been totally fine as far as I know) - is now deader than I have ever seen any battery. It is like there is no battery in the car at all. No lights, no clock, nothing. So now I don't know if the starting issue killed the battery, the dying/weak battery caused the starter and/or starting problems and all this is still on top of the clutch problem. *ugh* So I have a 3000lb paper weight sitting there and don't even know where to start.

So after 25 days and 3 awful starts just to keep the battery from dying (car is fine once it starts, so just drove around in circles for an hour because I can't risk shutting it off anywhere except the driveway).....it's got to be:

1- the new starter is faulty or wasn't installed correctly
2- the flywheel was always the problem and the shop ripped me for a new starter I never needed (and kept the old one)
3- even though the starter feels solid and tight, something must have broken/shifted and it just need adjustment

My life would be a lot simpler if I could do it myself where the car sits now. I would have to squeeze under the front with no jacks or jack stands. I am hoping that I would be able to tell - assuming I get the starter off - if after going to that trouble, whether I would be able to see enough of the flywheel (without a special tool to turn it) what the answer is. This really sucks.

Dead battery will make the starter click. The starter Might not be installed perfectly straight causing the teeth to misalign


ReD RaiN