Starting Issue, dies on 1st crank

[beavis]

Hello there, I’ve been having this PITA issue with my 09 mazdaspeed 3. It fights me to start. I will go to start the car and it will crank once and then die. All lights go black. I have to reset the ignition and try again. Sometimes it will crank once, sometimes twice. After many tries I can USUALLY get the car started. Bought this car used last summer and has progressively got worse since I drove it off the lot.

My theory so far is that it is a bad ignition switch or a wire somewhere is damaged and shorting.

So far I have done:
NEW starter
checked all fuses
swapped relays to try to rule out a bad starter relay
cleaned and tightened grounds
verified that the battery is good, I have also tried batteries from 2 working vehicles

Any advice is appreciated.

Topic

[nickelfritz9]

does it have anti theft? alarm?

[beavis]

The car has the oem alarm/anti-theft system.

[Author]

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