Starter Motor in Washington

More starts than the mileage suggests

A starter wears by cycles rather than by distance, and driving here produces more of them than the odometer implies — gates, junctions, pull-offs, and journeys that are short and frequent rather than long and few.

When you are a long way from help, a starter that has begun to hesitate is worth replacing on the hesitation rather than on the failure.

The climate, in a number

Parts of the Olympic Peninsula take upwards of 150 inches of precipitation a year, so nothing underneath a car there is dry for long. A starter draws its heaviest current on the coldest morning of the year, which is the morning it is most likely to be asked twice.

What goes on the roads in winter

Liquid calcium, sodium or magnesium chloride goes down before a storm, solid rock salt takes off a thin layer already frozen on, and sand still goes out in colder weather. The starter sits low enough on most engines to be inside the spray, and it is the solenoid connections rather than the motor that corrode first.

Hills and traffic

Seattle and Tacoma are built on hills steep enough that parking on a gradient is routine, which loads the parking brake and, on an automatic, the parking pawl. The correct sequence on a slope — brake held, parking brake applied, then select park — puts the load on the parking brake rather than dropping the vehicle's weight onto the pawl.

Puget Sound traffic is a brake problem on top: stop-start driving at full vehicle weight consumes friction material at a mileage a rural car would never approach.

What else Washington does to a car

No road salt on the west side, so what corrodes does so from the air.

Cascade pass descents, and Seattle hills in traffic.

Constant rain, and brake corrosion is the local consequence of it.

What we hold, and what it costs

5 options from Bosch, Cardone, Denso, Remy and Valeo, from $199.99 to $249.99. Prices are firm — where we have no price we publish none.

We are a reseller rather than a manufacturer: we source the part, check it over and sell it, and we confirm it against your year, make, model and engine before it ships rather than asserting a fit on the page. We ship anywhere in Washington, including Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma and Vancouver.