Thanks for the update, as I was quite curious, having had a problem with similar symptoms. But your situation seems to be quite different.
All things considered, I think replacing an iffy battery is always the right thing to do, and I’d go with the heaviest-duty that will fit in your car. IIRC I think my alternator replacement, with labour, was on the order of about $400. A new starter motor might be more. Plus I had to pay labour charges for replacing the battery, even though the battery itself was under warranty. In my vehicle they have to put the car up on a hoist and remove a front wheel in order to access the battery! (The engine compartment has terminals for jump-starting, but no actual battery.)
Poking around on google, it looks like it is buried under a bunch of crap. If you are standing in front of the car, on the right side (driver’s side) of the engine bay you have the battery and the air filter box right behind the battery. The starter is straight down from the left side of the air filter box. You should be able to see it underneath the air filter and under a bunch of wiring and hoses.
I found two videos on youtube showing how to replace it (there are probably more, I just looked a the first two that came up). The first video left the air filter box in place and just removed the battery and some other bits. Looked like a pain in the backside to me. the second video removed both the battery and the air filter box and moved a bunch of wiring harnesses and hoses out of the way, which made the job much easier.
Either way, $700 seems pretty reasonable to me.
I would have replaced the battery too. Iffy batteries often end up becoming dead batteries a month or two later.
Yeah, moving an air filter box doesn’t seem like a big deal at all. In fact, that’s the one thing I ever helped another motorist with.
After school one day, there was a student with his hood up, and I came over to see if I could help. His air filter had come loose, and he had no idea how to fix it (his previous attempt was hot-glue, and you can imagine how well that worked). I saw a big hose clamp dangling next to it, and it wasn’t too hard to figure out how to put it on and tighten it back up.
In general, though, my feeling on auto maintenance is that I probably could learn to do most of it myself, and I could probably do a pretty good job of it, but I don’t find it particularly enjoyable, and so I don’t mind paying someone else to do it for me.
I have always liked tinkering with things. That’s probably why I became an engineer. I started working on cars when I was about 11 or 12. My neighbor’s father had an old MG Midget that he was constantly tinkering with, and my neighbor and I were his helpers. We both learned a fair amount about car mechanics before we could even drive.
I used to do all of my own maintenance and repairs. I even swapped out an engine, and decided I never wanted to do that again (pro tip - it’s a lot harder if you put a larger engine in than the one you took out), then a few years later I did do it again.
These days I will often let a shop do the basic maintenance like oil changes. I don’t enjoy doing those any more.
I don’t like working on modern cars. Everything is crammed in there as tight as they can make it fit, which makes a lot of things miserable to work on. I like working on my Jeep or my old F350. Everything is easy to get to. I also have a 1926 Model T and a 1953 MG TD that I like to work on, especially the Model T because everything is so much different than a modern car.
I can definitely understand why a lot of people don’t have any interest in it, though.
Ah, we too have an ailing Subaru, an 06 Forester, that has had a chronic problem with the alternator and battery. They’ve been replaced together at least three times. Then, the battery recently died again because it wasn’t getting charged. That’s it, time to replace the whole car. (It is 19 years old, after all.)
It is with this car that I learned from our mechanic that this sometimes happens, “the battery destroys the alternator, then the alternator destroys the battery.” So he replaces them together. But with our Forester, there some weird electrical issues, probably both in the engine bay and behind the dash, likely caused by mice and/or ground squirrels chewing the wires. This has led to weird issues like not being able to turn off the radio, and possibly even this issue with the alternator and starter. What-ever.
We just bought her a new Crosstrek, and we’ll do our best to keep the rodents out of the garage from now on. (They don’t bother my old Impreza, but then, I never leave food trash, empty drink cans or packs of gum in my car.)
Anyway, I’m posting here, just in case anyone else has chronic battery life issues and/or failing alternators. This may be an old car thing, or an old Subaru thing, or other.
That’s the funny part-- I do, too. Just, not cars.
I think it’s that, when I’m tinkering, I like to do creative things, but in an already-built car, someone else was doing the creating. Creating an entirely new engine from scratch? Yeah, that’s cool. Putting an engine back together in exactly the same way that someone else already did, a few years ago? No, thanks.
Yeah, but wiring issues are beyond me. Radiators? Springs? Normal maintenance? Sure. Just not electrical. (Even our mechanics didn’t want to touch this issue…)
OP said the starter didn’t even crank the engine, so it can’t have been a fuel problem.
Last time I had a battery replaced (this was a roadside assistance service), the tech plugged in a portable battery to a terminal under the dashboard first, which kept power up to all accessories until the new battery went in. I didn’t even know that was a thing!
It’s become more common, I assume due to alarm systems and anti-theft features in car radios that get very unhappy if they lose power completely. It’s a lot easier to keep power to those things to keep them happy than to go through the reset procedure if they lose power completely.
You know, it just occurred to me that I might keep the Forester kind of alive for a few more months by using a trickle charger, to recharge and top off the battery between (short) trips. I mean, they’re pretty cheap, and I might zombify this old car and keep it “alive” for a while. Worth experimenting, anyway. I’ve got a week off coming. Any thoughts? (If you’ll pardon the hijack)
Something very common but often overlooked by mechanics. If someone says that their car goes dead after sitting between 48 and 72 hours it is almost always a stuck relay. The relay itself can discharge the battery. I simply charge up the batteries and feel with my hand for a warm relay. Usually the horn relay, in the case the horn is usually already unplugged.
The new Crossteks are pretty, I bet she’ll enjoy it. I considered Crossteks but there weren’t any nearby in the price range I got from the insurance settlement. I’m new to Suburus after 3 Civics in a row but I’m liking the sure-rootedness of the AWD and the higher field of vision with a SUV after a lifetime of sedans and mom vans.
I’m going to remember your bit about not leaving food remnants and other urban rodent attractants in my Subie. I have only the street as a parking choice so it would behoove me to be as unattractive to wire chewers as possible. So, thank you for that advice~we’ll see if I can moderate a lifetime of bad habits…
Incidentally, I just found the invoice for my alternator replacement (and labour-only for the warranty battery replacement) from back in April, and it was actually $550 plus tax (I don’t know where my recollection of $400 came from). I suspect that a starter motor would cost more than an alternator and might be more time-consuming to replace, so that all makes sense.
Guess what else it zeroes? The ECU (Engine Control Unit) statistics, which matters not a whit unless you’re just about to go in for an emissions test in one of those jurisdictions that still requires it and bases it on ECU readings. It takes about a week of driving for the ECU to build up all its readings again. Fortunately around here emissions testing has been discontinued on the basis that it’s no longer necessary.
I used to like working on cars. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost patience to deal with setbacks and unpleasant discoveries, like “I can’t get to the parts I need to without disassembling 5 completely unrelated assemblies” or “I need a 7.3 mm left-handed 5-point socket” or “I just broke something absolutely necessary in the process of disassembling one of those five completely unrelated assemblies” or “I need extra joints in my arm to get my hand past these obstructions.”
Whoa! I’ve been having this very problem with my car, I’ll have to try and find a warm relay. It’s been a couple of years now, really not much of a problem because I drive it almost every day, but I know it’s out there waiting to screw me over one of these days.
