EOC using starter to restart?

[betasniper]

The manual says that this car can be flat towed.
The time almost died, I probably shut the engine down 50 times in that trip alone. So that means I just need to trickle charge every night to keep it healthy? I have to park on the street so it would be a bit difficult to charge at night because I don't know if the Extension cord will stretch across the street and the battery charger is an old, big kind that only has a time dial. Not a "smart" charger.

I did however clean the throttle body and IAC. On startup, it revs high then drops down to 1200 or so. Same in neutral at a stop. But only on start up. After it idles at ~800 at a stop in gear (not me driving). Any way to fix that first?

[Diesel_Dave]

Originally Posted by betasniper

The time almost died, I probably shut the engine down 50 times in that trip alone. So that means I just need to trickle charge every night to keep it healthy? I have to park on the street so it would be a bit difficult to charge at night because I don't know if the Extension cord will stretch across the street and the battery charger is an old, big kind that only has a time dial. Not a "smart" charger.

I'm not sure how long your commute is, but 50 starts will definitely take a LOT of battery power. I should also add, that if you intend to do this for a long period of time you may have to prematurely replace the starter. Starters are designed to live for a certain number of starts, and you're putting about 50 times more cycles on it than "normal". Vehicles with auto start/stop systems have special starters designed to handle the increased number of cycles. I'm not saying flat out that you shouln't do what you're doing, I'm just saying be aware of the probable results.

With regard to the charging, you might be able to swap batteries, so you can charge one near the house rather than in the car. That being said, you'd probably want to go with deep cycle for that. Plus that sounds like a lot of battery handling that probably won't be much fun.

[WARNING: Diesel_Dave is far from an expert in modifying electrical systems]
Another thought that occured to me is that you might want to look into putting in a larger alternator. If you had one that was sized so it can charge your battery more quickly then it might be able to keep up. Others will have to give you some tips on exactly how to do this. I'm not sure whether it's just as simple as getting a larger one and making the belt fit, or if there's mods that need to be made to the electrical side of the system. However, my thinking is that if you have an alternator that has twice the output you can keep the battery charged with the engine on half as often. You might also be able to accomplish the same result my putting a smaller pulley on the alternator so it spins faster, but I'm not sure if you'd have to work about overspeeding the alternator when your revs are high.
[End warning]

[nemo]

I agree with DD 50 starts is quite a few. Reducing that number would be a good idea as well as having some way to monitor the battery voltage. Timing lights to reduce that number may help, assuming you are EOC to lights. Hypermiling tips 30, 32 and 33 deal with this subject. Route planning to reduce number of stops? Chose only higher payback time to EOC, longer lights or longer hills? Some aftermarket instantaneous MPG gauges contain functions to monitor battery charging with settable alarms to warn of possible problems and allow instant MPG feedback to help increase MPG.

[pete c]

I think you seriously need to consider a different car/tranny swap to a manual if it is practical.

EOCing, IMO is a manual trans only game. There are a few reasons, number one being safety.

A manual trans gives you the means of instantly spin up the engine to restore power steering and more importantly braking. Most power steering cars are quite steerable without power, brakes, not so much. You get a few pumps, but, when your vacuum supply is gone, you basically have no brakes.

I guess EOCing in the middle of nowhere with good sight lines and no other cars around is OK from a safety standpoint, but I still wouldn't be comfortable.

The other issue is mechanical wear. You may or may not be damaging your tranny and you certainly are making the starter, battery and alternator work much harder.

[hungryhunter]

Originally Posted by betasniper

I have now been EOCing for a bit now, but since I have an automatic, I have to key start the car. I have done this a little bit but then after one EOC the car wouldn't start. So it seems the battery "died". Ok, no problem, it was old to begin with and I already had a new battery which would fit. It wasn't a deep cycle because we didn't buy it for this car but it's CCA rating was quite a bit higher than my car requires. I figured this would mean that it would also have a higher battery capacity. I'm not sure if it actually does because after charging it yesterday, during my commute today the car almost didn't want to start. I slightly delayed some people behind me so after that I kept the engine on for a little bit. When I got home, I started charging the battery but the charger was only drawing about 5 amps to start with when I set it to 10 amp charging. In half an hour it was reduced to about 1~2 amps which I think means that the battery was only discharged a little bit. Does this mean that my starter is to blame for the inability to start after EOC?
Thank you
(and sorry for wall o text)

Starters draw a lot of amps from a batt. It takes a lot of driving just to re charge the battery from 1 start let alone 50. They also get hot and can burn out if they're used too much in a small period of time. Also your alternator is going to draw a lot more to try and re charge the lost amps putting more drag on your accessory drive belt using more gas. A batt with significantly higher cca is also a lot heavier. Additional weight is also causing you to burn more gas. I use a 12 lb race battery. Are you really getting any benefit from shutting your engine off and constanly re starting it?

[Ryland]

Most repair manuals tell you to let the starter rest for 10 minutes for every 10 seconds of cranking, the first second is the hardest and will produce the most heat as it's moving the engine from a dead stop, so I'm not sure how to factor in that kind of use but I'd say that if you are restarting with the starter more then once every 5 minutes that you are at risk of burning out the starter very quickly, same with the battery cables that go to the starter.
The starter is also drawing around 100 to 200 amps, maybe more and that kind of high load on the battery takes a while for the battery to recover from, I'd guess at least ten minutes of running and if you are repeating that then putting the battery on a trickle charger is very much needed, if not at home then maybe at work?

[betasniper]

My car is in the paint shop right now so I'm driving the other car we have. Saturn Vue V6 auto. This is the car that the battery in my car was supposed to be for but was the wrong size. The current battery negative terminal on the Vue looks corroded. (shown in pic) Is that what I was supposed to look for near the engine block ground? Cause I couldn't find any connections like that.

I was EOC'ing because if I only put the car in neutral, It would rev to 2~3k rpm. Now that I cleaned the Throttle body (previous condition shown in second pic), It only does that when the car just starts up. I am trying to fix that so I don't have to EOC anymore but still benefit from P&G.

[Ryland]

If your battery post is corroded and you didn't clean it up when switching batteries then that is another problem right there, it's going to keep the starter from getting full power and it's going to keep the battery from charging as fast or as fully.
Battery posts and terminals should always be clean before being assembled, ignoring this vital step will shorten the life of the whole electrical system by adding a great deal of resistance and lowering the voltage that everything is getting.