Click sound when starting (no ignition)

[MontanaMike]

Ok, so here's the story...

A few months back my Tercel failed to start and it just made a click sound. Someone told me it was probably the starter or solonoid. So i started checking all the cables and found that the solonoid cable that connects to the battery was loose. I ended up putting on some conductive grease on the clip as well as some conductive grease on the battery terminals and voila! Started running great!

Now it's been about 3 months and it's starting to do it again. I tried checking the solonoid-battery cable and everything seems to be ok there. I also checked batter for corrosion and it looked ok (I have not used a volt-meter on either yet)

Have you guys got any ideas what could be wrong?

I get lights and radio and fan when I turn the ignition... along with the CLICK sounds.

I had someone push start me and that worked fine. Drove around for 20 minutes and then it wouldn't start again.

I tried jumping it this morning, but still nothing more then a CLICK sound. The other car sounded like the idle dropped when I was trying to start.

Should I just pull all the battery cables off again and clean them? Could they just be dirty or corroded somewhere? Or does it sound like something else?

pls help... and thanks in advance for your time.

MontanaMike =)

[Neu]

that's the sound that usually occurs when the starter isn't getting enough power to really do it's job. If jumping it isn't doing anything(assuming you let the other car charge yours for a few minutes and you didn't just put it on and then go) i'd say your cables are loose somewhere, or there's a break in one. Or your solenoid is going out.

[Petros]

Check not only your starter cables, but also the engine ground cables (there should be one off the head to the fire wall and one off the block to the frame down near the starter), and check both ends of the battery ground too.

You might have a bad solenoid on the starter and it happened to fail a few months after you fixed the starter wires. You need to replace the starter (or just the solenoid if you can find one).

But I would not do that unless you verify all electrical grounds first, and check the ingision switch is working too. Do that by running a jumper wire directly from the battery to the solenoid. Also, as a final check, most auto parts shops like NAPA or Autozone can bench test the starter and solenoid for you once you remove it.

The starters on these cars are pretty durable, they do not fail that often, so I would check out everything else first. But they do occasionally fail, in that case I would get one from a wrecking yard, chances are it is good and a lot less costly than a new one or rebuilt one.

Good luck.

[rapidoxidationman]

Sounds like you need to load test your battery... the fact that the "jumper" car idle speed drops when you connect your car via jumper cables tells me that you're drawing a lot of power from the good battery to make up for your not good battery. Get it tested.

[MontanaMike]

Ok, problem solved. Turns out that it was the ground wires. Apparently their is one that connects to the starter/solonoid unit. This bolt was a little bit lose (barely finger tight) but caked in dirt, mud, oil... you name it. Anwways, I pulled it off cleaned it up, and Voila! Up and running just fine! I think in the past it was a bad connection on both ends of the ground... this time it was no longer on the battery end.

It all makes sense too... the last few months have been pretty dang cold, but recently (about a week ago) it warmed up around here and a lot of snow has melted, splashing dirt, road grime and all sorts of crap up onto the already bad connection. Anyways, it's working just fine now.

Thanks for the quick responses... you guys are great! I love these little cars. I hope to have a week or two this next summer to clean the whole thing up... nothing worse then a grimey ass engine!