1999 Jeep cherokee sport - Starts sometimes and other times not - won't crank or make a noise when trying to start

[Gjam]

I need some HELP. My husbands jeep is driving him crazy. He drove it to work and started fine. Then went to start to come home. Nothing. No crank, no click, nothing. Towed home. Battery OK. Anyway, he put new starter on. Started up. I drove it to station. Got in to come home. Nothing. Same darn thing. We jumped it. Pushed it out of way. Started. It's done this many times. Let me say, though, he went through a huge amount of water before this happened. Gauges went nuts for a while. Don't know if this could've messed up a sensor. He's loosing sleep over this. PLEASE HELP with any comments. Thanks to anyone that could help with this problem

[fredjacksonsan]

My apologies for the slow reply, I don't get here much any more.

I had the exact symptoms on my '04, and it turned out to be the battery, even though it was only 4 years old. Same issue with my wife's Wrangler and in fact on all of our Jeeps (we have had 5 between us).

We just got in the habit of replacing the battery every 3 1/2 years...


edit: Oh, and it got worse the hotter it was outside.


Now that I've re-read your original post, it may be the big water he went through. It's a '99, I'm not sure for that year does it have a distributor? If so, I'd dry that out first (and maybe replace cap and rotor) and see if it will help.