Truck won't start

Yesterday I went to start my Tacoma and when I hit the start button the engine would start then shutdown. This went on for three cycles until it stayed running. The next time I started it happened again. This morning the truck started first press? Any thoughts...

 

could've been some kind of a fail safe if a sensor was reading something wrong...if you have any friends at a dealer, I would have them run a scan and see if it stored any error codes... just my .02 of course.

 

This os going to sound odd, but do you or did you have a portable cell phone charger (a power bank) pluged to your 12V cigarette lighter outlet. One of these:

 

What are you thinking? An initial over draw of the power system from the power bank? Threw an oh shit moment to the system and it shut down to protect itself?

 

No, nothing plugged in. It was weird because when I would press the start button the engine would start but would not idle. It just stopped! I went through this 3 times before it continued to run.

 

No, I had a similar issue where a cheap power bank was back feeding the ECU through the 12V cigarette lighter outlet. The first time the truck wouldn't lock, and the screen on the cluster kept saying that the truck was running. I initially choked it up to maybe a random freak glich in the ECU code. Then the next day the truck started fine, but after I got to my destination and was trying to get back in my truck after locking it. It wouldn't unlock via the remote or the door sensor on the handle. After getting my door open I tried to start the truck and the screen would come on, but it would start. I figure the only thing different was the power bank that I had plugged the day before. Sure enough I unplugged it and haven't had a problem since.

 

Yeah that sounds like it something different. I would start by checking your current battery charge. Then if that's good, try some octane booster to rule out bad gasoline. Then if not that your going have to start looking at other things. Just start by eliminating the inexpensive stuff first. Once helped a guy replace his clutch on his Shelby because he thought he burned it up. Half way through the install I randomly checked is clutch fluid level and it was really low. So he replaced his clutch for no reason.

 

Leaning towards this. If the battery can't feed enough power to the ECU, the truck will shut down. Take it to the dealer though and then let us know.

 

I recall there was a thread exactly like this where it turned out the trucks battery had a bad cell. They even load tested the battery and it was fine. Some thing to do with cranking only.

 

Yeah like the person above said if a cell in the battery is bad then it won't have the same amount of cranking amperage

 

Do you have the Tow Package or not? It would be interesting to know, because you get a bigger battery with the Tow Package. Even with a bigger battery, a bad cell is still possible.

 

A bad cell will give you a lower static voltage. Each cell provides 2.1 volts times 6 cells giving a good battery 12.6 volts. A bad battery will definitely cause issues