OK, here's the deal. Lately my Centurion has had some problems starting. Yesterday I took the battery in and charged it. Put it back in this morning and thought I was set to go. The starter motor was barely turning over, and finally it started cranking a bit, and the engine started. I thought weird, since the battery is about six months old, and I just charged it. You could kind of feel that the power was there, but the starter motor had alot of resistance when turning or something. So I arrived at school and turned it off. I think, well I might as well see if things are better now since it's been running a bit. Oh no, the starter motor screams, and there's smoke coming up from the area where it is located. I try to turn it off, but it won't, I'm sitting with the key in my hand and the starter motor is kind of grinding the cogs. I open the hood as quickly as I can, and there's a bit of smoke and the starter stops before I get the wrench out to undo a battery cable. I think, well maybe that was a once off experience. So when I'm now finished for the day, and I try again, it did exactly the same thing. This grinding noise and the car won't shut off. I'm a bit in trouble here, since I can't take the car in the back yard, I'll have to put it on the street. My girlfriend is coming with her AAA card in about two hours, and we'll take it home. Any suggestions on what to do and maybe not to do? I want to get this sorted a.s.a.p. since it's my daily transportation, but I don't want to hand it over to GM. I was thinking about taking out the starter motor and check the cogs, and also run it separate to the motor. Any other thing I should think of initially? Any help is greatly appreciated since I'm in a bit of a mess here.
I've had this happen a couple of times in the past. I replaced the starter and found the post for the starting wire was stripped. The wire wasn't held tightly because the threads were gone. I think it was arching through the gunk and keeping the starter going. This would happen most often when the engine had been stored for a while and took extra cranking to get it going. I learned to be patient and wait at least 30 seconds between cranking attempts to let the starter cool, and not crank for more than 10-15 seconds at a time. Watch out for alarm systems with a starter kill. There is serious amperage that runs through the ignition switch, more than most alarms can handle. I added a "start-m-up" kit to get around this. It uses a Ford style starting solenoid to run the starter. A new starter, "start-m-up" relay kit, and 0 gauge cables have my car starting great.
