“Starter failure, go to dealer” CaliT

2015 California T, 10k miles, was on 200 mile drive, almost home, stop for gas, go to restart, got “starter failure” warning. Third time, car started and got it home.

Put the factory tender on the battery, went from four lights to all seven green in a few hours — battery is an Odyssey replaced at dealer less than a year ago. Tried to start ... click, starter failure warning. Multiple times. Disconnected the negative terminal, waited 5 minutes, reconnected, same result. Everything else works — radio, lights, etc

Not sure if a battery issue would cause a starter failure message or if it is actually a starter issue. Anything else I can check?

 

Going by the TFT voltage, it's just above 12.5 V, hit the button, I hear the "click," dash blinks, get the error and it's a little bit above 12 V at that point.

 

So, just an update ... ran out to AutoZone and picked up one of those Noco Genius 1000A 12 volt lithium jumpers. Took a couple of hours to charge that, hooked it up to the positive terminal on the California T -- there was no obvious ground point the way there was on the previous California but there was a handy bracket for the battery cover -- and the car fired right up. No errors, no residual idiot lights, etc.

I'm not sure what my previous Cali 30 was doing normally, as there is no voltmeter on that car's TFT, but on the T for the first 5 minutes or so, at reasonable revs (2500-3500), it was reading right around 12 volts. Once the car had warmed a little, and I had a little open road, I gave it some more revs for a minute and the voltmeter suddenly came to life and went up to 13 volts, then rose to about 13.5 volts, where it stayed ... allowing the car to rev down, it would get up to about 14, revving the car hard, it would sink to 13 and come back up. Not sure what's normal on these cars. Idling in front of the garage at home, it was steady right about 13.4 volts.

Shut it down, put it back on the tender, tender was at 3 LEDs lit out of 7. I don't think that's some sort of linear scale, I think 3 means it's low, four means there' enough to start, and on up to fully charged and maintaining.

I'm guessing I probably need a battery -- even though a new Odyssey was installed 6 months and 1000 miles ago -- but also wondering about the charging system.

What's interesting, and confounding, was the car specifically reporting a "starter failure" ... of course, if the battery is too flat the car won't start, so I guess it IS a starter failure, but doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the starter itself.

 

Next morning ... “starter failure” ... jumped it again to drive to dealer. Watched voltmeter sink from a steady 12 down to 11.5 regardless of revs, the longer I drove, the lower it got ... making u-turn to get into dealer it suddenly surged back to 13 volts.

 

Okay, just following up with the apparent problem, in case anyone else encounters the starter failure message. On the California T, there is a part called the battery ECU that sits on top of the positive terminal of the battery. It contains two large posts -- one for the starter, the other for the rest of the electrics, as well as a few other small terminals. This part was loose on the battery, and had apparently arced enough to partially melt the plastic. You could rock it back and forth with your hand, leaning it the right way enabled the car to start off the battery without the jumper device. The loose connection to the positive terminal also probably explains why the voltage was decreasing as I drove, and probably bumps, or acceleration or the motion of turning rocked it the right way so it made good contact temporarily, and the voltage would go back up temporarily. Part 3 in the diagram from Ricambi.

Food for thought ... replacing the OEM battery with something else, would be a good idea to make sure the connection is nice and tight. My car had an Odyssey installed a few hundred miles ago, which is likely when the problem started.

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Agree ... the Odyssey the selling dealer put in my car was causing "system not programmed" errors after 18 months and could not be charged to spec. The local dealer replaced it with an Interstate AGM.