Last week Luke’s Jeep decided that it no longer wanted to start. The funny thing is that the Jeep had been having troubles earlier and then Luke decided to show me what was happening. Apparently it had been struggling to start and getting worse every time he tried. I told him not to try it because it would be his “last start” before it finally died, but he wanted to show me anyway. Sure enough it started, but just barely. He shut it down and tried to start it again after just to see if I was right, nothing happened. So anyway, Luke’s Jeep was dead because it wouldn’t start.
It died sometime last week but we didn’t have time to address it until last Thursday. Finally I got back into my all-to-familiar mechanic mode to try and diagnose the situation. First thought was naturally the battery, so we took that in to Kragen (a.k.a. Schuck’s) to get it tested. As expected it was fully dead, Luke had to bite the bullet and buy a new one. After a long drive back to the Jeep we threw the new battery in and nothing happened again. I was a little perplexed but I did not give up, it had to either be wiring/connections or the starter. Since this wasn’t our only project of the day, we had to spend time on the website and emailing as well, there was no time left in the day to continue working on the Jeep so we drove back to Matt’s apt. for the night.
The next morning we headed back out to the Jeep but not before stopping at Kragen for a starter relay just in case that would fix it. After we got to the Jeep we put the relay in and tried it, still nothing happened. Nevertheless it could have been other connections or the starter. So I used my multi-meter and tested everything I could. As it turned out the starter was getting the necessary power from the batter and the ignition key switch was working properly, so it had to be the starter. We made a third trip to Kragen to test the starter and obviously it was dead too. Luke again had to buy a new part but this time we were pretty confidant that it would fix the situation. We drove back to the Jeep and after a little while of me getting terribly dirty and greasy the new starter was installed. Did I mention that there was dozens of bees flying all around me as I installed the starter? I hate bees. Anyway, starter was in, battery was new, Luke’s wallet was $200 lighter and we still didn’t know if it was fixed. After a moment of silence I asked Luke to try it. “YES, it works, let’s get out of here.” We quickly left for a celebration at KFQ and then on to our San Diego adventure.
-Carson
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