wanderingbison9 said:Hit the shops today. Drove, stopped, drove, stopped, drove, stopped... then nothing. Just dead. Won't even turn over. Could be the starter or maybe just a blown fuse, but I don't think it's the battery since there's zero cranking attempt. Now I'm stuck in some parking lot, and there's no way I can get this sorted before Tuesday.
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I've run into the exact same thing—the brushes in the starter are shot. Over the years, instead of staying perfectly round, the commutator gets slightly oval from all the wear, and then the brushes just lose contact because they're hitting that narrow spot. You can sometimes get it to work by push-starting it, and after you've been bouncing around on some bumpy roads, the vibrations might nudge those brushes back into place long enough to crank again. But once the rotor settles back into that "dead zone," you're stuck again 😢
For me, out of like 20 tries, it only actually died twice where I had to go back to push-starting. Once the holidays are over, I'll have to swap out the starter...
Luckily mine's a gas engine, so push-starting isn't such a nightmare. 😁
ps: Man, if I could just whack the starter with a heavy tool (not the car itself, obviously), it would probably fix it temporarily. But in this Chevrolet Cruze, the starter is buried so deep under everything else I can't even see it... so for now, I'm just finding spots near little hills so it's easier to push.
