Thread: SE-L died on me.

Drove to a meet this morning, and the car was surging and stumbling a bit on the way there and back, almost died when it came to a stop. Later drove it down the block and it died on me, battery wasn't dead and all the electricals were still working. All the fuses were fine, so I'm thinking maybe the fuel pump crapped out on me? Any ideas?

What happens when you try to crank up the car?

Absolutely nothing. Which makes me think starter, but that was just replaced less than 10,000 miles ago. Although it was replaced with a remanufactured one. I forget, which brand of starter always craps out, was it the Hitachi's or the other brand that slips my mind at the moment.

Well starter isn't going to make you car stall and die. Sounds like a fuel issue to me.

And the mystery thickens. Towed the car home, let it sit for a bit while I leafed through the Hayne's manual, and it occured to me I had no idea how old the battery was. Well it turns out it's from November of '02, it's a Nissan battery so I'll probably replace that just because, but, here's where it gets interesting, I decided to try and start it just for ****s and giggles and it came back to life. No sputtering, no stalling, idle was completely stable at ~800. Revved it a couple times and still no problems. Now I'm afraid to drive my car.

Do you have a volt meter? Check your maf sensor.

I'm pretty positive it is your starter, especially since you replaced it with a remanufactured one.

I had an Autozone starter, year and a half later it crapped out. Which is around 12k miles.

Check your alternator too, if you replaced it with an Autozone, Advance Auto, or Napa ones, then it will last as long as the Starter.

Get either low mileage ones from Andreas Miko, junk yards, or forum members

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Ok anyway back to why the car mysteriously started after you towed it to your house.

What happens with the starter is, it gets stuck and when you try to crank it it doesn't come out to spin the flywheel to start the car. Usually hitting the starter with a hammer makes its get unstuck. So when the car was being put on the tow trunk there was probably some movement/shaking so it got unstock.

I've had to push start my car from a hill because of the stupid Autozone/Advance Auto/Napa starter. So next time it gets stuck hit the starter, you can reach it from the intake side, just tap on the transmission where the starter is supposed to be.

No voltmeter, although I have regrounded the MAF and have cleaned it with intake/TB cleaner. I have tried switching the ground over to where the ECU is grounded on the intake manifold after reading the O2 sensor thread and that actually made my idle more erratic, so I switched it back to where it was in front of the battery. I'm gonna toss this one up as a two part problem that just happened to occur at the same time. What's the difficulty of replacing the starter? Nothing too bad right, I think I've read it's easier from the bottom.

Hehe your seriously gonna hate it haha.

And you can only do it from the bottom on low ports, not sure about high ports.

Just unbolt the V bracket, that will give you some room to actually take out the old starter.

I would first make sure it is the starter though, next time it does it just hit it and if it starts working then thats the problem.

IIRC, wasn't there an issue with the distributor flaking out after warming up, that causes the car to die? Something to that effect, that after the car cools off, you can start it again just fine. Heat it up, and the contacts fail causing the car to stall?

I'll look it up, thought it was the dizzy though.


EDIT:
Okay, two possibilities. First, the coil on the dizzy, second the ECTS. (Coolant temp sensor).

Try the ECTS first, as it's the cheapest of the two (if you can find a voltmeter, you can test the ECTS without having to replace it, first).

Dizzy's are more costly, IMO.