Questions and Answers

Intrepid No-Start Q. Dear Sir, I have a 1996 Dodge Intrepid,with 67,000 miles on it. I haven't had any trouble with it until here recently. About 2 months ago, it was failing to start at times, and other times it started with no incident. I checked the battery and since it was the original one from the factory, I took it to have it checked out.

An auto parts store put it on a machine, and said it showed to have some weak places in it, but generally was okay. However, since my husband is an OTR truck driver and home very seldom, I need to know that my car will start, whenever I need it. So, I bought a new battery, and it was starting just fine until a couple of days ago when it wouldn't.

Thursday morning it wouldn't start. It would crank, but wouldn't go ahead and start. Thursday afternoon, it started. Saturday morning it wouldn't start, today, Sunday, it started. I don't understand what could be wrong with it, and if I could get it to a Dodge dealer to have it checked out, I would. However, I don't know whether or not to trust it 65 miles to the nearest dealer, and I don't know whether it would start or not on the day of the appointment. There are absolutely no trustworthy mechanics in this small town of 300. Do you have any ideas of what could be wrong, or how I may get it to start every time? Please reply if you do.

Thanks,
Carolyn

A. I'm afraid I can't be too much help to you Carolyn. There are so many reasons for an intermittent no start condition as you describe. The first thing a technician would have to do is determine if it was ignition or fuel related. Only then could he begin to trace out the problem. Of course if it starts up for him each and every time, he'd be hard pressed to find anything wrong.

It's possible there is a code stored in the computer that will aid in the diagnosis of this problem and a technician can pull out this code and find the source of the problem.