Starting difficulties after battery install

[The Critic]

OK, so I posted in the other thread that I had some trouble starting my Saturn after dropping in a new battery. The battery had a 3/07 build date, so it was understandable. A 25 min drive on the road, and it starts perfect.

Fast forward to today, I took the battery out (disconnected the terminals) to put the receipt in the pouch. Once everything was reassembled, I went to start the car. EXACT SAME scenario. Cranks for about 3-4 sec, no start. Crank it a second time, starts fine. I allowed it to run for about 5 min at idle, shut it off, restarted it, and it started up even better than it ever has.

Any explanation?

 

[Quest]

doode-

things that you need to check:

-see if you can pull any hidden CEL codes or so.

-check your fuel rail pressure

-check to see if you have any ignition troubles (weak or worn spark plugs? dunno if you have any caps and rotors or plug wires though...)

-check all the grounding taps on your wiring loom for intermittent/poor ground reference. Clean those points and chassis with emery cloth and then dab the bare chassis metal surface with some silicone dielectric grease before bolting those grounding connections back to the chassis.

-while it maybe remote but I acually came across some tempramental starter motor that doesn't make any sense to me. Keep that in mind if all the aforementioned problems been checked/verified.

Q.

 

[The Critic]

Thanks. The starter has always been questionable with this car given my recent starting problems, so replacing the battery (which failed the load test) was a first step.

 

[Laminar Lou]

Dumb question, did you clean the connections to the battery really well? What did you use?

 

[The Critic]

Both the terminal and the battery post itself were sparking clean already, so I just gave 'em a good wipe.

It is a GM side post screw on battery terminal.

 

[Laminar Lou]

Oh well, worth a shot.

 

[sfam198]

I'm not really sure if this is the case with your Saturn, since it doesn't have a very sophisticated computer, but sometimes at work if I forget to hook up the memory saver or if it doesn't work right when changing a battery, the computer loses its memory and has to re-learn itself. On most cars this is not really a problem as they re-learn within a few minutes, but every once in a while, I'll get a car that I have to give it a good amount of throttle for a few minutes just to get it to idle on its own and then drive it around the block so that it will start up for the customer.