ignition troubleshooting

[panzershreck]

need help isolating the problem here... as said before in an earlier thread from the beginning of the week, my car wouldn't start up no matter how many times i turned the ignition (this being 30 minutes after driving it on the interstate & local roads)... then after another 30 minutes of waiting, i decided to try it again, and it started up immediately no problem, turned it off, tried again, and again, and again and every time it started up immediately... the starter motor still seemed rather slow, so that is still a problem as well... in addition, this ignition/electrical problem has been going on for quite some time now, about a month... at its worst moments, depressing the clutch would kill the engine, turning on the fan would kill the engine, and other times turning the key wouldn't even light anything up at all, much less turn the engine over... however that electrical problem seemed to disappear after several long interstate highway trips... now its just noticably slow to startup... so what could it be?

[winfred]

id be looking at stuff like bad connections at the battery plus make sure it is has a good charge and the big fuse by the battery is clean, i just tracked down a weird problem on a friends 87 325i, it would die at almost the same place everyday and if he poped the clutch it would restart usually but not off the starter, long story short it finally ****ed up for me and the alternator brushes were gone and the battery had a bad cell, the alternator was the straw that broke the camels back, it would work just enough to recover from starting up then the car would be running off the battery till there was not enough power to run the injection system

[Reidal]

Absolutely. Battery and connections. I've had an actual broken battery terminal post internal to the battery before now. Messed me around for weeks before I finally caught it out because every time I checked voltages etc the break was not apparent.