Beetle won’t start

April 4, 2007 on 10:03 pm | In Volkswagen Beetle |

Well I took the beetle out last night and to get it going I needed to bump start it. Luckily my neighbor saw I was having problems and came out and pushed the car to get it started… wahoo! Problem was, while I was out I realised I was pretty low on petrol and stopped at a station… would it start again? Like hell!

I managed to convince a guy out with his kids to try help me bump start it but he was pushing too slow and it didn’t work. I also tried pushing it as fast as I could and jumping in but each time the car slowed down too much because I have to jump in, stick it into 2nd gear, turn the key and press the ignition button. Anyway, I ended up running my toes over at one point which made them go numb! :(

Tonight I put the back up on an axle stand and took a look at the start motor. I disconnected the battery before I did any work. One cable had fallen off where it wasn’t a tight fit. I disconnected all cables and wire brushed them and the connectors on the motor itself. After connecting everything back up, I put the wheel back on and lowered the car back down. Tried to start it and NOTHING at all!!! Oh wait, I forgot to reconnect the battery ;) The engine turned over but didn’t kick in… damn!

I was quite disappointed, I supose this is quite a simple process but to someone who isn’t all that up on cars, it seemed like a fair bit of work to me. I decided to try use some jump leads to give the beetle battery some extra juice so I hooked some leads between my clio and the beetle….. BROOOM BROOOOOOM kicked straight in!

I don’t know how long the beetle has been sitting so I might be able to get away with borrowing my mates battery charger, if not then i’ll need to buy a new battery. Someone has suggested it might be that the alternator is not charging the battery but lets hope its not that :p

So anyway I have kinda diagnosed one problem! Next thing is to try work out why/where it is leaking oil from tomorrow!

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1 Comment »

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  1. Try bump starting it backwards next time.
    The reverse gear has a much better gear ratio which suits a push start.

    Comment by Earl Grey — 11th April, 2007 #

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