RCpilot

Today I came out from work to find that my '99 TL would not start. I would hear a click from under the hood when attempting to start, but no crank. Did this about a dozen times before calling a coworker to jump it. After connecting got the same results. After a few more attempts and some time to let the batt charge I got lucky and it fired right up.

Drove it home and shut it off. Tried to restart and nothing. The battery was over 3 years old, so I replaced that since it was time anyways, but it seems like the problem is still persisting all of a sudden. From reading, it sounds like the starter may be going out.

Any way to isolate it?

RCpilot

Oh yeah, I've had this car about a month and it has 144k on it.

RCpilot

Well, after searching again, I found this thread:

https://acurazine.com/forums/2g-tl-p...please-942850/

My initial search had 'starter' misspelled. Guess I'm going to try the starter since I have the exact same symptoms.

Tosh

Are your ground wires in good shape?

RCpilot

I haven't checked them yet. If the one to the block turns out to be good, shouldn't that eliminate the issue being a bad ground?

thoiboi

Sounds like a starter to me too.

RCpilot

If nothing else it will give me a chance to check my shift solenoid valve C while I have the starter out.

The car doesn't downshift from 2nd to 1st properly when coming to a stop. There's a brief period when you can hear the engine idle up between the transition from 2 to 1, and if you dare hit the gas during that time, you slam into gear pretty hard.

Tosh

Correct.
Also check the positive cable. You might be able to use jumper cables connected in parallel with the car's cables to see if that combo can pass more current to the starter.

RCpilot

Well, replaced the starter ($166+tax from Autozone) and haven't had an issue so far. Took me about 45 minuted total. Lets hope this slays the dragon for now. It got dark quick so I didn't have time to pull the solenoid valve, so that will have to wait until the weekend.

TonyNY27

So I have a similar issue, but not really sure what the problem would be.
Have a 99 with about 234k on it. Yesterday, I went to start the car and all it did was crank and not turning over. I had a similar issue a few years back, and the mechanic went and changed the fuel pump relay I think and cables. Then I saw some similar issues on this forum and I changed the key to a different and no issues for 2 years till yesterday.
This is what I have tried so far, I tried 3 different keys and no starting. I did it get it to finally turn over (after I had pushed it out of the driveway). The only thing I noticed was that when I put the key in the ignition and it actually turned over, the green immobilizer light came on briefly. When it didn't turn over, the green light did not come on. So what am I looking at? A new ignition switch or a new immobilizer unit? Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.