Q: Why car is sluggish starting?

asked by on January 20, 2017

When I start the car it is sluggish starting. This has only started happening in the last week. I don't have any symbols lighting on the dash telling me something is wrong. Had the battery checked and it is okay. What else could be wrong?

My car has 169000 miles.
My car has an automatic transmission.

Hello, There are many different things that could potentially contribute to your car starting sluggishly, however I would recommend starting with checking the most common things like the starter, starter relay and starter solenoid. These are things that may not necessarily register by the computer triggering a check engine light in your dash. In some cases if the starter solenoid is starting to fail, it may drag slightly when turning the motor over resulting in it transmitting less than the optimal amount of power to the starter resulting in the starter turning over slower than normal. In other cases, you may have a starter relay that may be intermittently working which would resulting in sometimes not receiving any response when turning the key to start the motor. This will generally happen intermittently and will work sometimes and not others. I would recommend having an expert from YourMechanic come to your location to diagnose and inspect your vehicle.

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