My 2012 Impreza (with about 58,000 miles) has been having starter issues that the dealership is not able to diagnose and I am hoping someone here may be able to shed some light on the issue. In chronological order, these are the issues:
1) About 6 weeks ago my car would not start after sitting overnight in the garage. When I turned the key, all the normal lights came on and the radio worked, but there was no cranking. The only sound was a clicking sound that we think was coming from the battery/starter. We took the battery out and took it AutoZone. They tested it and said it had a full charge, but a dead cell, so I bought a new battery. The car started fine after we put the new battery in.
2) For about 3 weeks after the battery replacement, my car would occasionally make a metallic scraping noise when starting. Not all the time, maybe once a day, usually first thing in the morning when I was heading to work or in the afternoon when I was leaving work. The car had always been sitting for at least 6 hours when the starter made that noise.
3) I took the car to the dealership to see if they could identify the problem, but it didn't make the noise for them, so they couldn't identify the problem. They told me to keep driving it until it got worse and then come back in. One week later my car would not start at all. Once again, the lights and radio worked, but there was no cranking. Just the clicking. So we tried to jump it, which didn't work. Then I waited about 24 hours because I thought maybe it was a fluke. The car would still not start the next day, so I had it towed to the dealership. They've had my car for about 1.5 weeks and they've been able to get it to start every day without any trouble. They are unable to diagnose a problem and are going to return the vehicle to me this week.
Has anyone heard of this happening in an Impreza? Any suggestions for what I should be doing to prevent similar incidents?
