My wife's 2000 Base model 2.7L intrepid is having an intermittent problem of not starting. It will click under the hood when trying to start, but will only start when jumped.

We have replaced the battery, the starter relay and the starter.

What could be causing this? She's pregnant and I don't like the idea of her getting stuck somewhere.

 

clean and replace the Battery terminals?

 

We did replace the positive terminal when we replaced the battery, the negative looked good.



What gets me is it starts with a jump. I don't know what would cause it to not start by itself and start with a jump.

 

And sometimes it starts just fine.

 

If it starts with a Jump, and battery is new, something has to be causing the battery not getting charged. It has to be high resistance on the terminals. look closer to the negative.
it is also possible that something is killing your battery overnight. Do a parasitic drain/draw test. instruction for this test can be easily found on google.

also get the alternater tested.

 

It didn't start yesterday in the morning and I jumped it and when she left work it started up.

It looks like it doesn't have a parasitic drain, but it's hard to do the full test because every time I open the door to pull a fuse I have to shut the door and wait a while for the current to go down.

The car started right up before the voltage test and after the current test. First I tested the battery voltage with the ignition off 11.92V, then on 13.65V, then the current test. Then I tested the voltage of the battery with ignition off and it was 12.34V.
At rest it's about .018A. They said it should be more like .052A. It is ~2A for a minute, then the interior lights shut off and it goes down to .776A then .052A then it levels off to .018A. I put the meter between the negative jumper terminal and the negative cable.


I didn't look at the actual terminals that connect to the battery, it's not that easy to get to on this car, but the positive is a brand new marine terminal and the negative did get brushed clean when we did the battery a couple weeks ago.

I'm going to try to start it later and see if I can get it to not start so I can test the voltages during the problem. If it does start I'll take it somewhere to do a proper alternator test.


Anything else I should try? I'll check the negative terminal tomorrow at my father-in-law's house.

 

O, I forgot ur car has a battery behind the bumper.
Maybe u can try cleaning off the Jump post. and I believe you can get the the negative post by removing Air intake box. reguarding the parasitic drain, 0.018 amp is good. for the door, you could have latch the door latch lock with a screw driver.

 

How is shifting? Does it go in park all the way? Just a thought, because if the shift cable is out of adjustment, the vehicle won't start. The car is starting at interval times... When it does start, does the engine turn over good?

 

It appears the remote jumper terminal was corroded and we took it apart and sanded it clean, its three nuts on a threaded shaft with 3 wires connected to it. It hasn't had any trouble since. What was happening is we would jump it on the side attached to the starter, the mechanic tried to jump it, but they must have attached to the other side of the remote terminal so it didn't start. We found this out by testing for continuity between the threaded shaft and the nuts.

I tested for neutral safety switch first thing... then we did the starter, the battery and the relay, also the ignition switch. Almost had us stumped. We still have test leads on the relay in case it starts having trouble again. That way we can see if the relay is grounded. there is a TCM input that grounds the starter relay and I suspected that so we put lead on the relay so if it doesn't start we can hook up a volt meter and see if we have voltage across the starter relay. if not we can ground the relay manually and bypass the TCM input.

 

2001 Intrepid will not start spray gas in intake and it will start and run stop spraying and motor stops. changed fuel pump there is fuel up to fuel rails. could it be the computer