Troubleshooting Electric Motor Starters

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Chuck Orlandi with Miami Shores Auto Repair here in Miami Shores, Florida. When troubleshooting a problem with a electronic starter, which is the starter motor that starts the car when you turn the key, typically, you'll know...it'll be more than one different symptom. Either you'll turn the key and you'll hear, like, a click or you may hear nothing or you may hear it drag real slow. Any one of those things, you know, could be a sign of a starter failure. What we would have to do to check something like that is, first of all, check the battery and make sure the battery itself is good. Make sure the battery connections are good and that there's no false contacts anywhere. And then we would, after that is diagnosed as being okay, then you move onto the starter. You know, from experience, when...that I've seen, you know, most of the times, it's pretty easy to diagnose that. Usually, it's...most of the times, it would be just a click sound, you know, and, you know, when they click, you know, just click, click, click, and then it may start, you...that's one sign that you know you need a starter. Your typical replacement costs on a starter would be somewhere in the, probably, two to 300 dollar range. It could be more, depends on the...you know, the labor involved. Some of them are harder to change, some of them are not too bad."