Starter voltage drop, intermittent no start condition

[bstone]

1997 Subaru Legacy Outback wagon automatic transmission.

Put in a Subaru reman starter 2-3 years ago. 2-3 months ago I began to have an intermittent no-start condition where I’d turn the key, hear a click, and nothing. Thinking it was a known issue of the starter solenoid contacts going bad I pulled it out and replaced the plunger and copper contacts. Sadly that did not solve the problem and, if anything, it’s worse now.

I went to Advance Auto Parts today and got a test of the charging and starting system. Here are the results. Your thoughts?

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Topic

[dan]

when it comes to electrical issues with cars the first thing I always start with is the battery, the battery is the heart of the system, if it’s bad a lot of wonkey things can go on.

A batteries static voltage should be around 12.6 Volts, and shouldn’t drop below 9.6 Volts during starting. Your connections should be clean and tight to the battery, so should the grounds, check for corrosion at battery and terminals, sometimes a intermittent no start issue can be caused by loose or corroded terminals and fiddling with things can cause things to line up properly enough to start the vehicle.

[bstone]

Thanks for the response. The battery is less than 1 year old, no corrosion whatsoever, very tight connections on both terminals, and I cleaned all the starter connections when I removed it last week. Therefore my confusion continues.

[Author]

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