Occasionally my car won’t start. The brake pedal is hard when I step on it and press the start button. Dashboard lights go on with check engine light. doesn’t start(only accessory) Try it a few time then I wait and try again and finally starts sometimes after 15 minutes. This is not normal! Jeep did diagnostics and can’t find anything wrong??
Does it crank ok? That rrr rrr rrr sound w/key in “start”? But it won’t catch and run? Or is there no cranking at all, no rrr rrr rrr sound? Not even a click? If the latter, no cranking, no clicking, try starting in N rather than P. Or try jiggling the transmission selector a little while attempting to start.
If there’s no cranking, but you do hear a distinct click when you attempt to start the engine, pretty good chance that’s due to a faulty starter motor. Further shop testing would confirm or disprove that theory.
You are correct, this isn’t normal behavior for your Jeep. If you want to start the engine, you should be able to do that w/no complaints from the engine area. But this complaint is not uncommon either by reports here, not just Jeep, but most makes of vehicles will eventually display this symptom. As far as the Jeep diagnostics, the typical scan tool diagnostics aren’t of much help for this sort of problem. Not saying providing diagnostics for this problem wouldn’t be possible for the manufacturer to include in the vehicle’s design, but a “fails to start” problem has no effect on tailpipe emissions, and scan tool diagnostics are designed mostly for emissions problems.