Arrrrgh! Help!

[flatsixturbo]

Hi, my 92 Carrera 2 is having a weird starting bug that's driving me crazy. I'd appreciate any advice you can give. I bought the car a couple days ago and drove it home about 700 miles. Other than what I'm going to describe below, it runs fine, although the idle seems a bit labored. Please bear with me, the problem is a somewhat involved. First, the car sat a lot before I bought it, having only accrued a thousand miles in the last year. The starter worked fine when I got it, it didn't crank great, but it cranked fine. I shut it down and restarted it a couple times and nothing changed. Then after driving it several hundred miles, I got fuel (so I doubt bad fuel is the problem), then got in and hit the key. THe starter cranked normally three times, then abruptly stopped. It didn't slow to a stop, it switched off as if someone had cut the wire. I tried again and it did nothing. All the lights and gages came on but no clicking, no grinding, nothing. I only managed to restart it by jumping it. Hooked up to another car, it cranked almost normally and fired up. I drove to the shop, bought another battery, installed it and hit the key. Still totally dead. The diagnostic machine revealed that both batteries had full charge, (12.75) and that turning the key only dropped the charge to 12.2 instead of the 10.5 or so to be expected if the starter was pulling any charge. Jumping it again started it. This morning, after sitting all night, the car started normally by itself. In summary, it seems it will start unless it has been driven for a while, then the starter does absolutely nothing, and doesn't seem to pull any charge from the battery. Sorry for the long winded explanation, but I'd appreciate any advice or ideas you might have!
Dan Foster

[kang]

A place to start is to check all battery and starter cables and connections. I recall some GM models that had this problem. When the cables were hot, they couldn’t flow enough current to start the car. If the car was cold, it would start normally. The cause turned out to be bad starter cables and/or connections on the starter. In your case, the extra juice provided by the jumping car overcame this resistance and your car started when hot.

It could also be a heat-related problem with the starter.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.