Nissan Repair: dead battery?, nissan quest, dead battery

Question
Thanks Von,

I have not been able to confirm that it is the interlock because its been starting up fine.  But my wife took it too the mall and told me of another problem that sounds related.  Will drive she said the car seemed to have 'mini' blackouts.  She describes it as if the car lost electricity and restarted within a second.  Also at this time there was a single click sound.  CAn this help narrow it down between the 3 possibles?

Thanks Keith

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Followup To
Question -
I have a 96 Nissan Quest and a troublesome mystery.  Recently the you first go to start the car it appears as if it has a dead battery, no lights, cranking, anything.  You can turn the key from couple to 20 times and then everything comes to life.  It'll crank and startup just fine as if nothing was wrong.  Driving it is no problem and when you turn it off and try to turn it on again you have a 50/50 chance it'll happen again.

When it does start the clock is at 12:00 and everything says it was a 'dead' battery, but when I took the battery to Sears to be checked everything tested ok.  They cleaned the cables and connected me back up and sent off.  It has since had a ‘dead' battery 5 times.  Any clues on where to start on the family van?

Thanks Keith

Answer -
Keith,

You have a couple of things that can cuase this.  The first is the starter interlock.  Turn the key and play with the shifter from park to neutral.  If this does not remedy the problem then it is the ingnition switch or the starter.  But, I bet the starter interlock is defective.  Email me back if this does not solve the problem.

Answer
Keith,

It sounds like a bad ignition switch since it is cutting out or the ignition relay.  The easy check of this is to change the ignition relay first and then see if the problem goes away.  It is hard to diagnose intermittent problems and my thoughts go with the cheapest item first.  Since it is almost ten years old the ignition relay would be the first thing to replace.  There is a large black lid under the hood that has the relay in it and it is marked on the inside of the cover which relay to replace.