jdwolff

At first the service department at a dealership in NJ thought it was an electrical short in the steering column, but they couldn't find anything. Now they are say they found a dead spot in the starter motor and are replacing it. I don't know if this is right, but they'll know (since they can reproduce the problem) right away if replacing the starter doesn't do it.

I'm driving a 1996 Legacy with 177k miles -- it runs like a charm but we have recently developed a problem starting it (within the last 5k miles). If the car is turned into a parking space on anything like a hard turn (I have to parallel park it in Manhattan every day for street cleaning), it often will not start. The symptoms vary -- either totally nothing, a clicking sound, or the regular starting sound but the engine won't turn over. The solution has been to straighten the wheels, which is tough to do b/c the power steering doesn't work with the car not started. So far we have always been able to get it started with enough fiddling around with the steering wheel in this way, but the problem is occurring with greater frequency. As far as we can tell, the problem does not occur if the wheels were straight ahead at the time the car was parked (this is a bit tricky to tell with tight parallel parking, since the wheels may be straight but the steering wheel can still be off by a rotation). The engine being warm or cold seems to make no difference. I have an appointment with a dealership, but I am looking for any thoughts or advice about what I might be dealing with and how urgent the repair might be. -Josh