car wouldn't start this morning

[pcpower]

my altima was sput sputtering this morning when I tried to turn on the engine. The car only has 7k miles on it,,,,

It wasn't the battery, because all the power instrumentation, bluetooth phone, etc., were fine and worked. Nothing was left on overnight (lights, etc).

But we decided to jumpstart the car anyways to see if it would help,,, first 3 times nothing,,, 4th attempt and the car finally did start up. There were some crazy sounds when it wouldn't start, basically it was like a whirring sound, on the 3rd attempt to jumpstart the engine started to rumble like it was going to implode until I pushed the start button back into the off position.

The other part of the story is that I yesterday I had to move the car like 2 feet in my driveway, so I started the engine, moved the car, all within like 10 seconds. I've heard that you can get vapor lock or something from turning an engine on/off so quickly.

Any ideas on what the issue is? I'm going 2 try and drive it at lunch, hopefully it will start up successfully....! :]

thx

[dangeris]

never had that problem but I have started the car to shut the windows or move it like you, two feet and shut it off, all within liek 10 seconds and after I shut the car off, you can smell gas from the exhaust. Not sure what that was all about...

[pcpower]

interesting,,

I was also thinking maybe it has do w/ the CVT and the CPU in the car. Within 10 seconds or less maybe it cannot process starting up, shifting, parking, turning off. I might have even moved it within like 5 seconds.

also - update, I just went out for a break from work and started my car up fine, ran it for like 5 minutes. I am still planning to stop by the dealership on Wednesday though for them to give it a quick check and change the oil.

[marlin29311]

Interesting - I've done this a bunch of times, moving my car into a better position on my driveway when i wash it, and i've never had any problems with this happening to me...

Just a note on the battery - everything will still work if it has some charge to it, but the starter requires much more power to start up. I don't know if this is a battery issue, but it's still possbile. Check the water levels in the battery.

[KIth_Shift]

same thing happened to me, i took it to the dealership of course they said everything was fine and they said nothing was wrong but of course as the days passed on, today as of right now my car wont start hmmm how akward, i dont know what it is but i want a refund lol

[pcpower]

are you having them tow it to the dealership? call them and make them pay for it, sounds like it must be under warranty.

one of the above posts mentioned checking the water level in the battery,, I didn't know there was water (or basically fluid) in there,,, how would I go about checking that? basically ask the dealer to check it?

thx

[pcpower]

quick update;;

had the car looked at today by Nissan. they did a battery test and didn't find anything wrong. they didn't seem to want to perform any other inspections because the car is running fine now. so I guess it will be a mystery why it wouldn't turn on the other day..,,

on the other hand, I also had an oil change, car now feels like a million bucks. yay!

oh, I also meant to ask, has anyone ever experienced (w/ CVT's) the plastic right beneath the shifter getting warm/borderline hot??? Yesterday mine was noticeably warm, is that something to be concerned about? I'm referring to the plastic base which is basically directly under the shifter,, the left side was getting heated.

thx
Modified by pcpower at 10:55 AM 10/29/2008