Your vehicle’s engine relies on the starter every time you press the start button. Without the starter, the engine cannot turn over. The reason why the engine needs to turn over is that this action brings air and fuel into the cylinders. Once the air and fuel are in the cylinders, the starter will send electricity to the spark plugs. The spark plugs use this electricity to produce sparks to ignite the air and fuel. This is what starts your engine. Here are signs that the starter is going bad.
Clicking or Whirring
If the starter is struggling to turn over the engine, it may click or whir. You may only hear this noise once before the starter dies, so if the engine starts, drive straight to our shop so we can inspect the starter. It’s also important to understand that your starter may never make noise before it dies. In other words, you may never hear clicking or whirring. You may just end up with…
A Dead Engine
As we explained in the introduction to this blog post, the engine will never start if the starter is not working. It may struggle to start and finally fire up if the starter is malfunctioning. If the starter is dead, however, you are not going to get your engine started despite your best efforts.
Working Lights
If you are sitting in the driver’s seat thinking that you have a dead battery, turn on all of your vehicle’s lights. This is the way to check to see if the dead engine is being caused by the battery or the starter. If the battery is fine, the lights will illuminate, and they will illuminate at their normal brightness. This means you have starter problems underneath the hood.
Hot Odors/Smoke
As we mentioned above, you are not going to get the engine started despite your best efforts, so stop trying to start your automobile. If you keep trying to fire up the engine, the only thing you are going to accomplish is overheating the starter motor. Consequently, you will smell hot odors and see smoke.
Oil Saturation
Finally, you could lose your starter if you have an oil leak in your engine. If the oil is dripping onto the starter, it will saturate the motor and cause it to malfunction. Unfortunately, you may not realize you have an oil leak until it’s too late.
We are here to help, so give us a call today. We can test your starter and replace it if it is not working.
