jartin2

My 4runner won't start when cold! Went and got a brand new battery with more cca than really needed and still doing the same thing! Can a starter try and pull to much power or is my problem elsewhwere?

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

Hard to say a bad spot on the armature or shorted one will draw lots of current .

Then so will bad battery terminals cracked / corroded loose.

Poor grounds will also cause the problem

worn pitted contacts in the solenoid.

Could be your oil is to thick for the outside temp.

Just what do you mean by cold ??

-50 F with 40 mph wind.

I am sure I might have missed some

askcheeks

i just went through a starting problem with my 90...check how much voltage the starter gets when you engage it. if your getting a large draw like .5 to 1 volt check all the grounds and power wire and connections, if thats not the problem, check the relay. fuses should go unsaid. if you have checked everything, and everything looks fine....jump start it...if it starts i'd say your battery just isn't big enough. it could in fact also be what wyoming9 said about oil...but unless you live in the arctic i dont think that will be the problem. also make your the tranny is fully engaged in park( i thought my car was but i had to rock it to full engage the pin) if its and auto

hope this helps

4Crawler

iTrader: (3)

What exactly is the problem? Does the starter run or not? If it runs, is it not cranking fast enough or does it crank and crank but the engine does not fire?
- http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTri...shtml#EasyTest

jartin2

It just cranks slow and comes to a stop but when i let off the key and hit again it rotates it and starts once the engine is warm it starts fine. I've tried 3 batteries and have had the same results, even had all three load tested and they are fine. Terminals are good. Iguess I will take a look at the wiring and grounds, but its never been wheeled or had the grounds messed with. Temp. 0 degrees runnin 5w30 . stock starter with 115k.

4Crawler

iTrader: (3)

Sounds like a bad connection, either power or ground. You can't just look at a power cable and say it is good. The copper can corrode up under the insulation at either end and it'll look perfect but won't conduct enough current do the the high resistance. And that high resistance causes heating and the hotter than portion of the cable gets, the higher the resistance gets. Often you can feel the cable and flex it along the length and the corroded part will be abnormally stiff. Or grab a volt meter and put one lead on the battery + or - terminal and put the other lead at the starter terminal and see how much voltage drop you see. Repeat that for all the connections on the power and ground side. Anything more than about 0.5 volts of drop is too much.

jartin2

Checked all connection with ohm meter all checked out I guess I will go get a starter! Can U check a starter to see if its bad if so how?

4Crawler

iTrader: (3)

An ohm meter will only tell you if a power connection is completely open. Problem is most ohm meters will not read well down at 1 ohm or below. For example I have a couple of meters and they will either read 000 or 001 ohms on the 2K scale. So 0 ohms is great, but 1 ohm does not sound like much, but try to put as little as 12 amps (like a pair of headlights would pull) through 1 ohm and you get 12 volts of drop. With a starter trying to pull say 200 amps, all you need is about 0.06 ohms to cause a 12 volt drop and 12 volts (battery voltage) - 12 volt (drop) = 0 volts. You really need to measure the actual voltage drop, under load, to see what is going on. And measuring at no load is basically the same as using an ohm meter. You need to have a hundred amps flowing in that wire to see if the cable and connections are *really* good.

I had a similar issue in my VW. I had replaced the transmission and while it was out, I cleaned and painted the one tranny mount (and the tranny) under the battery tray since it was all rusty from a leaky battery years ago. So put it all together and the starter would spin too slow to start the diesel engine. Turns out, the way the factory ground cable run is that it goes from battery - terminal to a bolt on that tranny mount I had painted, then a cable goes from there back to some other place. But the main ground connection for the engine/starter is via that bolt into the tranny mount and with the new paint on that and the transmission housing, the connection was a little weak. So to find that. I just hooked up a jumper cable from the battery to the block and the started worked fine. So, I just added a separate ground strap from that ground bolt to the block to duplicate the jumper cable connection and all works fine, in fact is is better than it was before.