It can’t be the starter…starters don’t really go bad that often…I mean they do, but nowadays? Naaaah.
Me – A few days ago
As always, I like to blog about tough fixes or oddball scenerios I come across. Here’s one from last week. Read on if you want to see how I troubleshoot this, or jump to page 2 to see some notes regarding the actual fix.
So yeah, roomy came home last week, parked his car as normal. The next day went out to leave for work, and found that his car wouldn’t start, with the usual flickering displays and dim lights. Sure enough the battery was dead, something that tends to happen to older car batteries in the bitter cold here in PA. NO PROBLEM..slap a new battery in and we’re good! Right? RIGHT?
You guessed it, slapping in a new battery did NOT actually fix the problem! Yes everything comes up strong now, it just didn’t start. Now, the odd thing with push button ignitions is, you’re not completely sure if the car is telling it to start, since there’s no key to turn to let you tell it to start. Is there something awry? Did a fuse blow somewhere? Let’s dig in.
Initial googling tells me that a problem plaguing some older 2011/2013 models of Sonatas was the park switch in the gear shift, and potentially the brake pedal switch. I ruled both of those out fairly quick: the display properly showed it in park and all other gear selections (I wiggled it for good measure anyway).
Another possibility was the key…did the ECM lose it’s key programming? I ruled this out as well, as I both tried another key, and then also tried turning it on without the key, which didn’t happen, so I’m pretty sure the key is working OK.
This is getting ridiculous now, maybe something with the bad battery messed it up? Hrmmm…fire up the scan tool and check it for errors. Nothing. Zero. Zilch, everything is happy. OK, perhaps a fuse blew somewhere. There’s only 1…2…3..50+ fuses here. I checked all of them using the tiny holes on top of each fuse thankfully…if one side read 12v, the other side should as well, and every-single-fuse tested good. Rats! At this point, everything is pointing to the starter, but, cmon, the car barely has 100k on it, the starter CAN’T be bad. It started up fine before the battery went, and the battery was bad for sure! Ok let’s check for 12v on the starter and solenoid, maybe a fusible link went somewhere.
Oof…the starter is buried on this engine, directly behind the intake manifold. Various Youtubes and such show taking the entire intake manifold off to get it out, that’s no fun. I can’t even get to the solenoid or battery cables, they’re WAY up in there. Long story short, I removed the lower intake bracket, and somehow managed to jam my arm up there and unhook the solenoid plug. That showed 12v (when trying to start), as well as the battery cable, which means it’s now for SURE the starter.
Pro Life Tip: Don’t believe these videos that say swapping this starter is a 2 hour job. It likely is for a seasoned mechanic, but if you’re a shadetree wannabe mechanic like me, this is not exactly an easy job. The biggest pain point actually is how buried the starter is, but also the fact that the oil filter lines are essentially in the way of both bolts you need to remove to get the starter out.