Having some trouble when starting an 03 Explorer

[Shaun0]

I just bought this explorer less than a week ago. I would take it to the dealership but its 2 hours away and would be a big inconvenience.

Keep in mind this only occurs occasionally. Sometimes when I go to start it, it makes a very rapid click-click sound. It only occurs after it has been sitting a while and the air conditioner was accidentally left on. When I turn the air conditioner off...it will begin to crank and will eventually start.

The weird thing is that it keeps resetting my trip meter and turning on the dome light (on my overhead DVD player). I had no problems like this when the a/c was left on up until this morning. I did unhook and rehook up the battery yesterday. The connection is good and tight however and I don't see how that would affect it.


Anyone ever have anything like this with their vehicle?

 

[UKExploder]

Unhooking and re-connecting the battery could have screwed up your computer so it's doing strange things maybe .....or it's just possessed......hahaha

 

[GregV8]

Measure the voltage on the battery, should be getting between 12-14V.
And do the unhook/reconnect again but give it a few seconds time off.

Try to analyze how it starts with the lights on/off, etc... see if a higher power drain is preventing the starter motor.

just my 2c

 

[BWilliams]

Sounds like your battery is going...

Best bet would probably just be to get a new battery... that's what I did when mine started acting wierd a few weeks ago.

 

[E.B. Cornburner]

Sounds like your battery is going...

Best bet would probably just be to get a new battery... that's what I did when mine started acting wierd a few weeks ago.

Before you throw a new battery in it, make sure the cables are nice and tight. We've experienced the same thing and it turned out that it was only a loose connection at the battery. Tightened everything up real good, and it never had a problem again. Usually this happened on the GM cars with side-post batteries in the winter months...The cold weather makes the metal contract, and the connection loosens up.

If you do determine that a new battery is necessary, I'd definitely recommend an Interstate battery. For normal use, they're the best in the industry. If you have massive amounts of stereo, then maybe a spiral cell battery like an Optima may be the way to go, but they're more than double the price.

Just avoid anything made by GNB (Wal-Mart's Everstart, others) and Exide (NAPA, some DieHard, others). Those batteries are absolute junk.