For about a year now, we’ve been having trouble with our otherwise trusty 11-year-old Honda Accord. On very rare occasions, it refused to crank when we tried to start it… It’s got a manual transmission, and it was acting exactly as it would have if we hadn’t stepped on the clutch: dead silence. After waiting a few minutes, it would usually “fix itself”. As a band-aid solution to the problem, I figured out that we could get it started by running a jumper wire from the positive battery terminal to the ‘S’ solenoid input on the starter. Worked fine for emergencies, but it’s been gradually happening more and more, to the point that it’s become nearly a daily occurrence. Tired of having to pop the hood to start the car, I decided that it was time to do some real troubleshooting.
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