2002 Protege Intermittent No Crank

[salguod]

My daughter's 2002 has refused to start or even crank twice now over a couple of months.

The first time several weeks ago she turned the key and nothing. I was home and went out and it started after moving the shifter to neutral.

Today the same thing happened. Shifting to neutral did nothing. Turning the key I get a click from the back side of the engine, which I assume is the starter solenoid, but no start.

I cleaned both battery terminals and tightened the clamps. I removed the ground at the top of the shock tower and cleaned all contacts. No change.

I had her come out and turn the key so I could listen to the under hood click and that's when I discovered that it was coming from the back of the engine. While she was turning the key, it started. It then started two more times in a row.

I'm thinking either a bad starter or a bad engine ground, perhaps? Either the starter is failing or there isn't enough current getting to the starter some times.

Thoughts?

[salguod]

Ok, two more questions:

1 - Where is the engine ground? There's a wire from the negative battery terminal that drops don behind and under the battery. It seems to enter a harness to the engine, but I can't see where it grounds on the engine. I'd like to clean that connection.

2 - I'm suspicious that the battery connections have been changed. They don't look factory and they are fairly corroded. I've attached a picture of the battery, are these the factory cable ends? The thought of changing those, or worse, the entire cable does not sound fun.

[FE3-323]

there is a fuse box near the battery that has issues known to cause a variety of issues. play with the relays in there. and look at buying a new starter

[salguod]

Based on the very intermittent nature of the problem and the very corroded aftermarket battery cable ends, I decided to pull those apart and clean them as a first step. Time will tell if that fixes the problem.

[FE3-323]

did you clean the spade terminal on the starter??? if your battery terminals were corroded i can almost guarantee that is as well. good chance theres your issue.

[salguod]

I did not, but take a look at the image above. The car has replacement clamp on cable ends. The clamp on area was full of corrosion. I cleaned this up. There wasn't much corrosion at the actual battery terminal.

[vw.fe2o3]

You can get splice in cable replacement kits that replace the last foot or so of the cable. I've had to do this on three different cars once they hit this age range. Corrosion had crawled down the inside of that ground cable. Cut it off, splice it in, good to go. Just don't cut more cable than the kit is giving you.