Starter problem on 2021 with 41000 miles?

Starter only clicks sometimes, and battery and charging systems are good.
Has anyone else had to replace the starter this early?

 

Welcome

 

On a large scale you can definitely get rare failures and defects even if the underlying design is solid.

I don’t think there’s any noticeable trend but it definitely doesn’t mean it can’t happen early. Of course I’m not saying it has to be the starter.

 

Welcome

 

Usually a voltage problem. Clean battery terminals to start troubleshooting.
I have a nifty voltage guage that plugs into the 12v assessory plug- on my sisters volvo we had this issue. I had her write voltage reading with key on before turning key to crank engine.
Then observe voltage during cranking. And write voltage driving doing errands.
I concluded battery was needing replacement.
Battery was replaced and problem gone.

 

Original battery?

 

Wouldn't surprise me if it is.
Mine is still on the original battery with 53k miles, and I bought mine in September of 2018.

 

What troubleshooting has been done?

 

welcome

 

have you made sure all of your battery connections are tightened and secured.

and you might what to post this in a different thread.

 

Battery has been replaced 2 years ago. System checked out at AutoZone. Printout shows battery good and charging system good.
Also, interesting enough, it said starting system was weak!
Could this mean that the solenoid is not working great, as in the internal contacts wearing out, as I have seen video replacing them?
Thanks

 

What climate are you in. In the hotter climates, the battery will start to go around the 2.5 year mark.

 

Definitely in a hotter climate (San Antonio, Tx). And you are right about the 2.5 mark

 

If it's clicking but not cranking, could be a dead spot in the starter motor. Not common to see one fail at 41k on this platform, but it's subject to contamination and duty cycle derating. Have you submerged the starter in deep water off road? Do you crank the starter 70 times a day doing Amazon deliveries? Could also be just a statistical outlier.

 

OK, heads up. I went through all of the fix-it things. The cheapest first. The starter relay was good. Battery was replaced. Replaced the starter with a Toyota remanufactured starter. Still only got one click when trying to start. Turns out there wasn't enough amperage going to the brand new starter from the brand new battery because of the old worn out starter cable. The 26 year-old, 360,000 mile starter cable wasn't strong enough to carry the current to kick the starter over. The best investment upgrade I made was the “Big 7" cable upgrade from Jeepcables.com. ($148) Their Gen3 4Runner cable DIY kit replaces not only the (1)starter cable, but the (2)alternator cable to an external fuse box (supplied with the kit) (3)back into the positive side of the battery, (4)positive cable to the inside of the fuse box and all of three of the ground (5,6,&7) cables, with professionally made, exquisite quality cables. All of the cable ends are labeled so you can’t mix them up. It was the best upgrade investment I’ve made. When the job was done, it turned over strong. Fired right up. So before you go spending all the money, like I did, to replace the battery, and the starter, and the relay, check and/or replace your cable(s).

On the subject of the Big7 cable upgrade, their supplied external fuse box comes with two fuses 150 and 200. If you were just doing a stock replacement, all you need is the 150. if you want to run accessories, winch, or have extra lights use the 200. The factory alternator single cable runs into the fuse box to a 10mm nut that you can clearly see on the top of the inside of the fuse box. It's easy to replace that single cable but is replaced by the two cables (alt cable to fuse block to pos cable) that run from the alternator to the supplied external fuse box back to the positive side of the battery not into the factory fuse box. The factory cable is discarded and you just re-tighten that 10mm nut with no cable attached.

The positive wire that goes into the side of the fuse box is by far the most difficult one to replace because the fuse box has to be separated from the fuse box case. There are four little tabs inside the fuse box case that have to be removed from the fuse box plate, after those tabs are moved out of the way you have to pull up, wiggle up, on the fuse box plate to separate it from the fuse box case. This can be aided by removing the large fuses and putting a hook onto the fuse box plate and gently pulling it to separate it from the fuse box case. Once you get it separated, the 8mm bolt on the side of the fuse plate for the positive cable can be easily removed and the new cable attached.

The other hard cable to install was the ground cable from the back of the passenger side of the cylinder to the firewall. You can easily see that ground on the top of the firewall by the heater control valve, but getting to the 14mm nut on the back of the cylinder head is hard for large hands.

There is a pretty good DIY video attached to the links when you purchase it from Jeepcable.com.


Peace. Stay dirty.
Big R

 

I also just bought a Jeep cables kit and while they look nice I don't like how they crimp them.

I wish I had caught this before hand and done the extra work to measure everything and ordered them from a custom cable maker that used the hex style crimper.

Maybe I'm being too picky. All that being said the Jeep cables start it well.

 

While still brand new you could look at soldering the joint -see blue mark?

 

I'm not a fan of soldering. I know from measureing the heat welding cable crimps generate that the hex crimps run significantly cooler which indicates that they make better connection. I just don't see why they wouldn't do the hex crimps with what they charge.

 

A benefit to soldering is elimating the voids between the cable (and its strands) and the terminal. This will help prevent corrosion from battery or salt brine in areas where it is put on roadways. Of course lots of heat, proper solder and its flux need selection.

 

That's true but a proper crimp and high quality heat shrink will do the same thing.

 

Take it to autozone or one of the autoparts stores and with a code reader they can tell you for sure how much left life you got on the Bat and then give you diagnostics on the rest. I doubt it is the starter with only 41K, unless you drove the 4R thru deep water and got this wet and corrosion got in there quickly, even then, I still don't think that is the case. Battery is where I think the issues are.

BTW, Welcome to Forum - Pics of the rig if you have some.

 

FOB battery is bad.

Mine did the same and it was FOB battery. Because of the button instead of the switch, it's kind of deceiving. If you had a key switch and battery or starter was bad, it would do the click and stutter, but it reacts differently with the button. It will just click once because the FOB signal is not completing the circuit and continuing to complete the circuit like holding a key switch on. I'm learning the had way because I don't understand why it talks to using the beep language, but it's something I did or haven't finished correctly yet. Mine takes 1652 batteries and I started carrying extra just in case. I could see being stranded over a FOB and $3 battery. I have had problems with negative battery terminal not wanting to stay tight.

 

That single point crimp is both overdone and doesn't maximize surface contact area between wire strands and lug body. I'm surprised for such a high amperage connection that style was used. When I performed 'flight hardware' certified cabling, even our crimp tools were routinely QA'd for proper crimp depth and for the small (12 AWG or less) were a minimum four point (DMC) crimp style.

Have always used either a full (circular) crimp or hex on larger gauges. When I added a winch and auxiliary power to my vehicle I bought this crimper (

$35 Sanuke Battery Cable Lug Crimping Tool Kit with Cable Cutter 60pcs Ring Terminals 60pcs Heat Shrink Tubing and A Bag, Wire Crimper for AWG 10-1/0 Electrical Lug

Sanuke Battery Cable Lug Crimping Tool Kit with Cable Cutter...) off Amazon for like $30 a couple years ago and make all of my high current cables. All of my heat shrink are adhesive lined so they essentially hermetically seal off my crimp and soldered connections.

 

Big R here. Just to clarify the product I received from JeepCables.com. All of the cables had fine quality crimped end(s). I don't know where you got the pic shown with the unfinished end or if you took apart a finished cable end, but here is a pic of my finished upgrade, note the professional ends are all labeled with a finished heat shrink at the crimped end.

 

I got that picture from there website, go to their home page and go to the pictures at the bottom. Mine look exactly like the the picture you posted and they are very high quality on everything but the crimp. It's probably more than enough for the load anybody will be putting on them but if you sold high end welding cables with that crimp you'd go out of business. I guess I was just expecting a better crimp for the price and if I had caught it I would have bought elsewhere. That being said they are light-years better than stock and I'm happy enough so far.