crazyleg555

Did my usual knight in shining armour routine for a charming young lady with a 2003 Audi TT roadster and replaced the starter motor, which was grinding on start up. Now I'm regretting it slightly!

The actual job went fine and I put the recon starter in no problem. Afterwards it started fine 4 or 5 times and I was able to bask in my glory, while the young lady showered me with compliments............

However...... sometime later she phoned to say that when she'd started it again later that day, she'd heard a strange popping noise, the starter cranked over really slowly and her stereo went to safe mode!

She brought it back a few days later saying that 9 out of 10 starts were OK, but it had done it again once. She started it up about a dozen times while I looked for potential problems under the bonnet and it was fine.

I decided to retrace my steps and dismantled everything apart from the actual starter motor body and checked every connection for signs that they could be shorting against something, but found nothing. I put everything back together very carefully and hoped for the best.

The car started fine every time I started it and once again she left proclaiming me a mechanical genius................ until about two days later, when it happened again!

Has anyone come across this issue before?

( I mean the electrical fault, not looking like a bit if a fool in front of an attractive young lady - we've all done that! )

Any suggestions would be more than welcome.

Could the solenoid on the recon starter be faulty?

Cheers!

ezveedub

If you crank the car and the radio went into safe mode, then the battery sounds like it has a bad cell. It has enough amps to crank over the car, but with a bad cell, the voltage drops too low. I've seen it happen on Passats. Time resets and radio goes into safe. I would also check the B+ cables and ground strap for voltage drops if the battery checks out OK.

crazyleg555

Thanks ezveedub, She brought the car back on Friday and I tested the battery and found it was very weak. I put a new battery on the car on Saturday morning and so far she hasn't phoned back!

J. Patterson

Glad that worked out for you. Was going to post about the battery but ezveedub beat me to it.
We promise not to tell her the old starter was probably good.
:-) I've made worse mistakes.