Intermittent Starting Issue. (1 Viewer)

[Everest]

A couple of days ago I had my A/C Condensor replaced on my 2005 GX470. Picked up the vehicle and left for an out of state roadtrip. Later that day (and already out of state) I went to start the GX after filling up and nothing, it would start or even begin to crank.

Dash and accessory lights all turn on and steering wheel moves into position with the key. When turned to start there is a single click under the hood and then nothing. The starter does not start to crank.

I brought the battery (less than 1 Year old) into the auto parts store and it tested out fine and in good health.

I went through and checked all of the connectors under the hood I could access to make sure nothing was left disconnected. Eventually I was able to get the vehicle to start by disconnecting the battery for 10 minutes to reset the ECU. Then I'll get a somewhat rough initial start. Subsequent starts are totally normal. Everything was fine for a couple days then it randomly happened again, same exact issue. Disconnecting the battery and reseting the ECU fixed it again (probably temporarily).

Any ideas what could be causing this? It seems far too coincidental that the issue started immediately after the shop replaced the condensor. It's never had starting issues before. Anything in that vicinity they may have disconnected for access or broken? I don't think it's the battery, starter relay, or starter since everything works fine regularly. Possible the ECU was damaged somehow?

 

[Rednexus]

If all of your battery connections and cables are indeed good (which is 100% where I would start first), it's probably your starter solenoid. It will give those exact symptoms - occasionally a "click" and no cranking, then after a few tries it will start normally. Then it will be fine for a few days and then start doing the same thing again. It will then get worse and worse. Disconnecting the ECU won't really have any effect, but disconnecting the ECU will result in a rough start as the ECU needs to re-learn fuel trims, timing, etc.

The starter is under the intake manifold on these so it's unlikely the shop would have done anything to cause the starter issue and it may be pure coincidence. Unfortunately the starter replacement on a VVTI GX is a royal pain and took me around a day as a DIY. The intake has to be removed and the starter bolts are painfully difficult to get to, requiring the air injection tubes and other components to be removed. The starter itself is cheap, maybe around $100-120 for a reman Denso from somewhere like RockAuto. I would only replace the starter with a Denso reman or a OEM Toyota starter and nothing else (Denso made the OEM starter), as this is a job you don't want to have to do twice due to a non-OEM part failing. For a shop to do this job it would probably be on the order of $700-1K with most of that being labor. If you are competent at wrenching and don't mind a frustrating job, you can DIY it for just the cost of the starter, some intake gaskets, and a bottle of coolant.

I would triple-check all of your connections and if they are indeed good, get the starter replaced. The starter on these is a known failure point and many go out prior to 150K. Mine was toast around 135K.