sp00led

I've had this symptom in a Mitsubishi and it turned out to be the starter. I'm curious if you guys have had this issue with the s2000s as well. The battery has 12.8V and is fully charged. When starting, the car cranks like it has a low battery. It will start but sounds very weak.

Anyone experienced this in their s2000 before the starter finally gave out?

Update: I left the trunk light on for about an hour and it dropped to 12.6V and the battery charger said 80% this time so it had less voltage than before. It started nice and peppy this go. It's weird how it's an intermittent weak start issue.

I may get the starter rebuilt locally. The two bolts on the bottom sound easy enough but the one on the top under the alternator sounds like a PITA.

sp00led

Surely someone has experienced this in their s2k before the starter went out IF that is what it is.

steven975

mine has started being weaker in starts, but i have a new battery.

Also have my air injection system broken (vac tank bung snapped) so that may be it.

Mr.Luder

The battery may have the right voltage but not enough cranking amps. A starter on its way out will not cause slow cranking.

Not Sure

This is exactly what I experienced when my battery was dying. My battery had enough power to read correctly on the voltmeter and crank the engine when it was cold, but if the engine was hot it would crank slowly or not at all.

sp00led

Here is an update. Still haven't solved the problem.

I had the battery tested and it was fine. Even replaced the battery with the one out of my integra and had the same symptom. I replaced the starter and it still does the same thing. I've checked the grounds. The battery ground is good, the G101 on the rear of the cylinder head by the firewall is good. The two grounds from the block to the chassis next to the starter are good.

The car will run if you pop the clutch after it gets warm and won't start.

zeroptzero

You are turbocharged , Amy chance that your battery is exposed to excessive heat of the turbo?, you could be boiling the battery fluid with a warm engine but the battery is fine cold. Just a guess.

mmm...vtec

I had a similar problem with my S. I let the "Chia-Pet" that was growing on my battery post go on for way to long and it ended up corroding the copper in the cable itself! The cable looked good on the outside but inside was pretty much done. Thats what usually happens in a case like this. By the time u change the batt the cable is usually destroyed too. Check the cable for high resistance to see if its still good. Ive seen it too many times to where people automatically condemn the batt and dont even think to change the cable.

sp00led

The battery was relocated to the trunk using stinger 4 gauge wire and it ran this way for 8k miles without problems. I thought the power wire may be the culprit so I bypassed that wire and ran new 4 gauge to a battery outside the car by the fender. I grounded it in the engine bay. Still the same symptoms.

The only other test I think I could perform is to remove the starter power cable and run jumper cables directly to another battery. This would bypass all the factory starting wires (with the exception of the call wire on the starter). My problem is easy to recreate so I would know for sure if this was related to the problem.

vividracing.com

It sounds like something to do with high resistance. When you say the grounds are good, are you testing them for resistance and voltage drop or just making sure they're tight?