I am faily new to the club, but we have owned this car for the past 13 years.
i love the car very much, It has just rolled over to 160k with heavy traveling recently.
im having an issue with starting the car, especially since we just had some heavy rain the past few days.
Lately its been a struggle to start, put the key in, set the ignition to on, wait for the beeps to stop, and then turn.
Only now it will click and not crank over. I pull the key out, repeat steps, and nothing.
Only a third time try will this actually start up.
Then on some occasions when it does turn over it will start up very roughly, id say it'll crank for about 2 seconds longer than it actually should.
Once the crank starts rolling on, it'll catch it self and slowly start.
After started, the car runs totally fine, without any hiccups.
At first i thought it might have been a fuel related issue, that wasn't the case. Fuel pump primes and relay is in good working order.
Then i moved onto spark, checked that and spark was good. (coil packs were changed out in 2014) I was at a loss for a moment, and decided to check the battery/alternator. (starter was replaced in 2010, had never given me an issue beforehand)
The alternator was fine, but the battery was "bad" in auto zone terms.
My question's are, would a bad battery be the cause of the bad/spotty starts? Would the drive through low to mid level high rain have caused something to go bad?
Much appreciation in advance.