[jcmcd]

Here's the deal, my 01 Jetta has been acting funny. Two weeks ago I was at the gas station and my car wouldn't start, I was driving all over that day so the engine was HOT, I called my Step-dad and he said my battery might be going dead, get it to the auto parts store. Lucky for me it started a few tries later, and Auto Zone told me I had a bad battery, $90 later I was on my way.

This past week it started again. Sometimes, mainly when the engine is hot from driving (and I have shut the car off) the car will not re-start. It turns over weakly, I can usually step on the gas to get the car going, but it clearly doesn't want to, it kinda chugs until it revs up.

My Step-daad looked at the car, we need to know how many amps the starter should be pulling, it is currently pulling 20-25. The charge on the battery when the car was off was 13.22, once the key was in the on position 11.32, and once the car was started (well trying to) it went down to 5.18 until it suddenly started and the battery went back up. We were guessing either I was given a bad battery, or the starter is starting to go... What do you think? What should the starter's amps be? Any ideas?

Thank you for your help, hopefully someone can enlighten me here!

 

[pjnuts19]

does the starter engage and turn the engine over or does it just click?

 

[jcmcd]

I got lucky, well kind of. I ended up one of the rare few who received a bad battery. Thanks for the reply though.