Originally Posted by
xCONWRATHx 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.
Originally Posted by
xCONWRATHx 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.
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.