My car is definitely not liking the weather in upstate NY. The battery was replaced twice now ( mini battery died after 4 years, and received bad optima). after relocating the optima to the trunk the car doesn't want to crank over now.
i found a harness left unplugged. It's coming from firewall and is very clean compared to the rest of the car. i have no idea what is it. Is this preventing me from cranking car over? car seems to want to start but doesnt.

The car does have aem ems so that is also an issue. i need to get it tuned but can not because of crappy weather.

help?
sorry for camera phone pic. i left my camera in FL.

 

also, could it be my oil? i have been running m1 10w-30 since i got the car (6yrs). however i am fairly new to this whole "winter" thing. some say 10w isnt good for winter and i should run 5w-30 or even 0w-30.

thanks

 

This is probably not going to be your problem but might help someone if the hit the search button some time in the future.

The shield that protects the starter is a fine place to catch small drill bits and bolts. I had one of each drop down into the shield and lodge between the starter and the shield. Well, the starter has two positive wires running to it and the shield is ground so guess what happens? Car down start. If a bolt or whatever gets stuck near the solenoid hot wire, it will arc to ground and not flip the solenoid. It clicks like it wants to turn over, but will not turn over. It will also randomly shut the car down when driving and then in the middle of traffic your car won't start for no reason, and then you slam the hood and suddenly, it starts.

You may have guessed, this happened to me, and it was 4 days of half hearted starts, no starts, shut downs, etc. before I figured it out. I found the bolt and drill bit on the dyno when we tried to start the car, and a guy said he noticed sparks coming from my starter when it fired. Hey! there's that drill bit I lost. Remove shield, remove bolt and bit. Problem solved.

May help someone in the future. Check your starter shield if your car don't start but it clicks like a low battery failure and you have memories of lost hardware during installs that never hit the ground and you never found, especially around the left of the manifold area.


/brox

 

that wasnt the issue, thanks tho

bump/

 

help