I have an 05 accord with 200K miles on it. Starts and runs fine every time. But when I am driving the car, turn it off and then try and restart it after, it takes a lot more to start. It acts like it wants to start and then doesn't, like its running out of fuel or spark. You hold it long enough and it sure enough starts every time but it just tells me something is wrong. Any ideas of where to start? Could plugs do this? It only starts like this after immediately starting after it is turned off.

 

Right after you shut down, take off the rubber hose from aircleaner to throttle body. Smell for gasoline.

What I'm GUESSING(!) is an injector leaks down, making a puddle of fuel in the intake manifold. When you try to re-start, it's flooded. If you wait an hour or 2 the fuel has time to evaporate then you're OK.

If that makes sense, pour a bottle of injector-cleaner in the fuel tank.

 

I tried some injector cleaner already, but that sounds like its very possible. Seems to run fine otherwise. It does seem like the starter turns over rather slow, I put a new battery in and it didnt change it. I wonder if that has anything to do with it? Any other ideas?

 

Try flooring the gas pedal when making a hard start. If this causes better start, then JB's diagnosis is likely.

good luck

 

Is the starter "slow" all the time? Good starts & difficult starts? Then the slow starter isn't the real problem. Slow starter might be the battery beginning to get weak, or maybe dirty battery-cable connections.

Either way, a slow starter would have to be REAL slow before it causes a non-start problem.

 

Any update on fix to this problem? I have 2006 Accord EX-L 2.4 4cylinder. 177,000 miles. Same weak/slow cranking starts for me with good/new battery. Eventually car starts and runs fine otherwise. It’s inconsistent too as sometimes it has what I perceive as a “normal” crank/start. Tried with neighbor’s Accord battery hooked up and got same results so I assume it’s not the battery. Both Autozone and Advance Autoparts tests showed good battery, good alternator, and good starter. Not sure if it’s electrical, fuel, or air. I have K&N aftermarket cold air intake replacing OEM air box, but that’s been on quite a while and worked great instantly, and it appears clean. Only been on a year or so. Will look at tube mentioned by JB. Thx.

 

Well, bhollehday hasn't posted anything since 2013, so I bet he's not watching here any more.

Try to smell for fuel in the intake manifold after you shut down. If nothing, then we can try to think of less-likely things.

If your problem is slow cranking, rather than failure-to-start; then look for loose/dirty/corroded battery connections. Both ends of both cables. AZ & places like that probably test the battery but don't necessarily look at how good the cable clamps are. Even less likely they would fish around for the other ends of the battery cables to check for bad connections.

 

So my 06 Accord EX wouldn’t even start this morning….been weak at worst to 80% at best starting up since my last post but today after a short trip it didn’t turn over at all. Just clicks. I checked all associated fuses and relays and all were good. Rechecked battery cables and grounding wires and they looked good. Battery was fine (12+ volts) and jumping it did not help. Made the call to replace the
starter. Bought re-man’d AC Delco part from Advance Auto. Short version of story: new starter works awesome and sounds great! Obviously that was it as I haven’t heard the car turn over this quick
in a while. Diagnosis: bad starter slowly degrading to nothing over 2-3 months.

Long version/postscript: 15+ years of corrosion made the 17mm front starter bolt difficult to get out. As it turns out, the hole that bolt goes into has an exit on the opposite side (right side) of the block and years of moisture/grit must have gotten in there because I needed multiple treatments of rust penetrating spray and heat from a torch to get that bolt out, and when I did, there was about 1/8 to 1/4 inch of threads that had aluminum block material stuck in it at end of bolt. I pulled that material all the way out through rest of threads so was worried enough to go buy a new bolt for that hole [part is Bolt, Flange (12x85)-Honda(95701-12085-08)]. The new bolt went in with medium effort and hopefully carved the threads correctly on the way in. The rear starter bolt came out and went back in with little effort. The rest of disassembly/reassembly was normal. I didn’t remove the throttle body from the intake manifold and that didn’t seem to add any complexity. Bottom line is to be careful you don’t break off that front bolt in the block if you have to do this on your older Accord. It may be as corroded as mine was. Good luck!