I’ll try to give as many details as I can. A little history to start, I bought it in October of 2018 so I’ve owned it for almost 2.5 years with excellent performance. I’ve driven it half way across country twice and it is my daily driver. It’s sitting at 55k miles. No, that isn’t a typo. It had 34k when I bought it from an old lady who had a midlife crisis, bought it brand new and never drove it. She did provide me with all of the records proving that she kept up with servicing, oil changing, all that good stuff and I have kept up on it as well.
It started a week or so ago. Sometimes, but not every time, it will take a few extra cranks or acts like the battery is low when I start it, but does eventually start. The battery is only about a year and a half old. I have no issues with radio, lights, or anything else. Even after sitting with the radio on for half an hour before work. Battery gauge shows normal.
I have noticed no consistency in conditions it happens in. It’s happened in both hot and cold weather. Sometimes it will start fine after being off for 9hrs while I work, sometimes it struggles. Sometimes it will even struggle to start after just being off a few minutes (like after getting gas). Sometimes it doesn’t struggle as long.
Once it’s on, I notice no issues. No overheating. ~25MPG. No surging. No loss of power (and I do climb a very steep hill going to work). Passed Cali smog last year with flying colors. No apparent noise coming from tank area. It DOES have a rough idle sometines, but has had one since day 1 of owning it. It DOES sometimes shift hard, but again, day 1. I did suspect a vacuum leak, because of the idle, the amount of sitting during the last ownership and a little tss tss tss (maybe not day 1, but maybe month 2) noise coming from the engine bay… but it wouldn’t have passed smog if there was one.
I know it may seem minor, but I’d rather fix whatever it is now than end up stranded in the middle of the night on my way home from work where there is no “convenient place” to break down at, possibly even miles from cell service.