My wife's 2013 Quest (97K miles, owned since new) stranded her while out running errands on Sunday. The starter was making noise but was not engaging the engine. $1,000 later, the dealership replaced the starter and the battery, and we're still having intermittent issues. Sometimes it starts right up, other times the starter makes a little bit of noise but does not engage the engine.

I'm guessing that the Starter Relay is going bad, but I had trouble finding any documentation for the starter relay. By a little trial & error, I suspect it's the one indicated in my photo, top right in the underhood fuse box. I've tried swapping it with the adjacent identical relay, which does not seem to resolve the problem.

But the starting issues remain intermittent... it may sit overnight and refuse to start in the morning, then sit (cold) for a couple more hours and subsequently start right up. I can't find rhyme or reason for when it starts and when it won't.

Am I dealing with a relay going bad (perhaps two of them)? What else could be going on?



Note: Those two relays aren't labeled in the diagram beneath the lid.

Go to the service manual link up top and plug in the car and section STR for starter and download it and page 6 of it.

What a mess and who designs this crap? 3 relays and the TCM and BCM and IPDM all unnecessarily involved in the starter circuit there. Main relay or solenoid is directly mounted to starter and the IPDM has two small ones overlaid on top of the big one--starter relay and starter control relay. BOTH the smaller ones must activate before sending power to the big one at starter. All kinds of ways for that to mess up! Likely the starter that got replaced had nothing wrong with it and what they do, change the most expensive parts they can to get max buck out of every repair.

A thousand dollars there! Sure glad I never let dealers touch my stuff EVER.

Appreciate that reply. The dealer where we bought the van is awful; the first time they tried to tack $350 of unnecessary garbage onto a (free) oil change, we stopped taking it to them. But nevertheless, since they replaced the starter, it's back with the dealer now to try to troubleshoot. I'm hoping they can run diagnostics that will show where the fault is in the circuit.

I ordered the proper size relay to replace those two in the IPDM but they're shipping on a slow boat from somewhere and I didn't have the patience to wait for my wife to have a functional automobile.

We will see...

They will suck you dry. Been there done that with a very similar issue.
You did the right thing by ordering the relays, just replace them once they are delivered and likely you will forget about the problem for the rest of the vehicle's life.