Hello All!

I am experiencing intermittent weak starts with my RDX. Originally, I thought it was the battery, so I replaced it. This helped for a day or so, then I had to jump the car a few days later on a cold morning.

I then thought it might be parasitic draw from the HFL module, so I disconnected it over the weekend. I am still getting fairly weak starts in the morning, sometimes I have to take the key out and wait a minute to try again, but it starts consistently.

Today I stopped at the grocery store after a short drive. When I went to start it upon leaving, it would barely turn over. Then about five minutes later it started like I just put a brand new battery in it. Sounded great...

So now I'm wondering if the starter is the problem. Anyone else experience this type of behavior from a starter beginning to go bad?

 

Bad starter, brushes begin to wear out and will cut out all together. I had a post doing a teardown a while back of the starter. In our case we may get weak or extended starts or a single crank and no start. Turning the key again may start the car.

You can discern battery from starter as the cars electrics will nearly turn off on a dead battery. If it starts up 5 minutes later like a new battery then its a starter.

Acura up here in the north had a starter for 235 canadian pesos, an OEM part. They told us the starters go bad so often that the price was brought down. This was the same case across 2 dealerships so we assumed its the norm.

To answer your question, yes the starter is going bad, make sure not to overtorque the starter on new install, and done cross thread a bolt like i did :P.