Car wont start..just buzzing sound from engine...

[Sbeing1]

Hey,
Well my automatic tranny just went recently (stays in nuetral) and now all of a sudden i couldnt turn on the car anymore. just when i turn the jey it makes a strange buzzing sound in the engine. I bought a new battery, wasnt it, bought a new starter, wasnt it. Could the autotranny be the reason its not starting? i dont know what else i should do. thanks alot guys!

 

[Sbeing1]

oh and if you dont know the story, i was on I-95 and i stepped on it and it downshifted POPED and stayed in nuetral no matter what youd shift the car into. Then i turned off the car and then tried to turn it back on and a buzzing sound just happened, and now still the same thing ever since. thanks !

 

[LA97GST]

Sounds like a dead battery or startor but you said you checked those. Maybe when tranny blew the flex plate was damaged and not allowing it to spin. Really the only way to tell is pull the tranny (which you will have to do anyways.) Why do you want to start a car wit ha blown tranny anyways?

 

[2-0turbo]

Sounds to me like one of your connections to the battery is loose. Either the clamps are not tight or perhaps you lost the ground. My first guess was battery too, but since you say you replaced it. The tranny staying in neutral is weird too. As LA97GST suggested, you may have damaged your flexplate--this is all very unlikely though.

Does the engine turn over?

 

[TURFNNSURF]

Hey,
Well my automatic tranny just went recently (stays in nuetral) and now all of a sudden i couldnt turn on the car anymore. just when i turn the jey it makes a strange buzzing sound in the engine. I bought a new battery, wasnt it, bought a new starter, wasnt it. Could the autotranny be the reason its not starting? i dont know what else i should do. thanks alot guys!

Im going to offer you some insight into what happened to your car and the tranny. The noise you were hearing a while ago, that people were telling you it might be a balnce shaft bering or harmonic balancer going bad. It wasn't that. It was the bolts holding the torque plate to your torque converter. As they got loose you started to hear the rattling from under the intake manifold in the engine. When you were on the highway they finally all backed out, causing the torque converter and torque plate to come apart. This made it feel like you went into neutral while driving, it also explains why the rattling noise was gone when you revved the engine on the side of I-95. Now your problem is that the torque plate is what your starter normally interacts with the start the car. Since it's not bolted to the torque converter anymore it can't turn the engine over either.

Chances are you need a new torque plate and a new torque converter along wit hthe new bolts to fix the problem.

The reason I have this knowledge, is that I just had something similar happen to me but I cought it when the tourque plate bolts had just gotten loose. Removing them one at a time and cleaning the threads, then applying some red thread locktight and torquing them to 38ft/lbs fixed my rattling problem. However I did have to have the oil pan dropped to make sure no other bottom end damage occured.

If you can pull the transfer case there is an inspection plate that can be removed to check the condition of the torque converter and bell housing, before dropping the entire trans..

Good luck.

 

[kevingst]

My car made a sound like that when I'd lost all the grounds to the block. But it only made the sound when my clutch was pressed in, not when it was released. Being that your car is auto (are they electronically controlled?) that may be a cause for your car's problems. Off the top of my head, look for the ground coming from the intake manifold to firewall, and the ground from the starter to the tranny bolt. Just an idea.

 

[Sbeing1]

WOW! thank you all so very very much! i really truley appreciate it, THANK YOU! turfnsurf you are the man! THANKS!

 

[Sbeing1]

Im going to offer you some insight into what happened to your car and the tranny. The noise you were hearing a while ago, that people were telling you it might be a balnce shaft bering or harmonic balancer going bad. It wasn't that. It was the bolts holding the torque plate to your torque converter. As they got loose you started to hear the rattling from under the intake manifold in the engine. When you were on the highway they finally all backed out, causing the torque converter and torque plate to come apart. This made it feel like you went into neutral while driving, it also explains why the rattling noise was gone when you revved the engine on the side of I-95. Now your problem is that the torque plate is what your starter normally interacts with the start the car. Since it's not bolted to the torque converter anymore it can't turn the engine over either.

Chances are you need a new torque plate and a new torque converter along wit hthe new bolts to fix the problem.

The reason I have this knowledge, is that I just had something similar happen to me but I cought it when the tourque plate bolts had just gotten loose. Removing them one at a time and cleaning the threads, then applying some red thread locktight and torquing them to 38ft/lbs fixed my rattling problem. However I did have to have the oil pan dropped to make sure no other bottom end damage occured.

If you can pull the transfer case there is an inspection plate that can be removed to check the condition of the torque converter and bell housing, before dropping the entire trans..

Good luck.

One question, wouldnt the car still turn over even tho the flexplate came off? I mean, since the starter goes on those splines on the outside of the tq converter then turns over the car, how would the flexplate and it being disconnected have any affect on that? Just trying to figure some stuff out, thanks alot!

 

[TURFNNSURF]

If the flexplate bolts holding it to the torque converter came loose then only the flexplate would spin when the starter engaged it. The torque converter needs to spin as well because that completes the connection between the motor and the trans.