Starting headache
 

Dear MT.net,

I'm pretty convinced I have a problem with my battery. Charged it for 24 hours with a trickle charger on 2 amps, took off charger. "Turn...half a second...turn...half a second..." Replaced charger, put it on battery boost "A few somewhat fast turns...slower turn...pause...slower turn..." etc.

I know that my CAS timing is fucked, but I doubt it would cause that affect consistently. If it can, tell me and stop me now. I also know it's like goddamn 5F out there, which means I'm a big giant ----- when it comes to trying to troubleshoot this stuff thoroughly.

As a result, I'm just going to rewire the whole electrical charging circuit, replace the battery, replace the starter, and replace the alternator with a 100A RX7 FD unit. I was already planning the rewire and the FD alt, so only the battery and the starter are unusual.

Talk me out of the below purchases:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mazda-MX-5-M...item27c092d527

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-ALTERNAT...item35b39c7b4a

And an Exide Orbital Spiral Cell Battery.

Replace the battery before doing all of that other stuff. Starter sounds like it is fine to me.

Thank you, Rharris. I'll skip the starter then!

Yep, you were completely right Rharris. I hooked up a much beefier booster to the battery (300A vs. 50A), and the Miata tried to start for a fraction of a second then died. It's trying to start normally now. I didn't think a two year old battery could go bad, or it just may be that it's (probably) undersized for the car. It is the previous owner's battery, so whatevs, it came "free". New battery and alternator time.

I recently had the same thing happen to me. The frustrating part was the battery is only 1.5 months old. I ended up replacing it with a bigger battery. No problems so far, even after not using the car for a week.

With the smaller new miata battery, it would have problems starting after not being used for 4 days or so.

I replaced the STOCK 11 year old Panasonic in my NB with an Optima Red Top. It wasn't dead quite yet, but it was noticeably weak. As someone on M.Net said "It's like the hand of God coming down to spin the starter." It's heavy but it eliminated any fear of charging issues. I use the tiny Panasonic to run my 12v compressor now.