I have a '91 Toyota Pickup (22RE engine) that starts fine when it has been sitting and is cold, but after I drive it and it is warmed up and park it, when I try to restart it, the solenoid just clicks. Whacking the starter doesn’t help anything. If I get a jumper cable on it from another car that is running, it will often crank fine and starts, but even that doesn’t always work until it cools down. I have replaced the battery, the starter (twice), and the cable from the battery to the starter, and the ground cable, but none of these attempts fixed it. There is a dash gage with the alternator charge, and it always runs in the high part of the good zone, so I think I’m keeping my batter charged, and as I said, it works fine when the car is cold. If it were the other way around and I couldn’t get it started when it was cold, I’d be stuck at home instead of somewhere else and that wouldn’t be so bad…
Any ideas? Starter relay, ignition switch, alternator cable…
Thanks for any help you can give.
When I had the same problem on my 87 Ranger I supected a bad cable.
Finding the culprit was quite simple.
I used one side of a jumper cable & jumped from positive on the battery to the starter relay. No joy, still would’nt crank.
But when I jumped from the negative post of the battery to the engine block & it fired right up, I knew the negative cable was shot.
Replaced it & problem solved.
The previous no crank on the Ranger was also a simple fix.
I saw the voltage from the ignition switch at the starter relay, but the relay was’nt closing.
12 Bucks for a new starter relay & that no crank was solved.
Looks like your Toyota has a bad cable.
Which ground cable? Find the one from engine to frame/fender/firewall and clean the ends. Good luck; it doesn’t always help.
In adittion to the cable, you could have a bad solenoid, or starter gear problems. I’ve had both in the past, and your shop would test for all these things. Had a sluggish drive gear on my Ford Granada, and kept a hammer in the car to give it a whack, which would normally work. A rebuilt starter solved the problem.