There are plenty of different problems that a car owner may end up experiencing with his car but one of the problems no one would ever want to experience is an engine that has seized up. Now, there are many different reasons why an engine may end up seizing. However, is a bad starter a reason for an engine to seize up?
A bad starter can lock or seize an engine. That’s because the starter is primarily what causes the engine to start in the first place. So, if your starter is bad, it will naturally make it more difficult for the engine to start and cause it to lock up as a result of how it struggles to start.
There are many different reasons why an engine can end up locking up, and a bad starter is only one of them. While a bad starter isn’t necessarily going to always lock the engine up, you should still take it into consideration as one of the factors for a seized engine. However, you should also consider all of the other reasons as well so that you can rule out a bad starter as the possible reason why your engine seized or locked up.
What is a seized engine?
Before we get to talk about whether or not a bad starter can lock your engine up, let us first talk more about what a locked or seized engine is. So, when we talk about a seized engine, it happens when the engine locks up due to mechanical failure such as when it lacks the necessary oil for the engine to move well.
What happens here is that, when the engine doesn’t have enough oil or when oil isn’t circulating well enough, the different parts of the engine will begin to cause more heat due to the friction that happens when they rub against each other. So, when the engine produces heat as a result of a lack of oil or lubrication, the bearings that are supposed to be there to allow the different parts to move smoothly will begin to grind against the crankshaft and camshaft. As a result, the engine will lock up.
You will know when the engine will lock up while you are driving when the engine will suddenly produce a rough sound that doesn’t seem normal. After that, it will immediately stop on its own and may even cause damage to your engine. The damage can be minor or can too much to the point that you might have to spend a lot of money to fix the engine.
In some cases, engines can also seize up when they are not running. This happens when the piston rings essentially freeze against the cylinder walls due to how they have rusted after not running for a long time. As such, this case is more common in cars that are already quite old.
Engines can also lock up due to water damage when you try to drive the car in floods. What happens here is that the water will get into the engine’s combustion chamber, wherein the piston won’t be able to reach the top of its stroke thanks to how water is filling up the space that air should be filling up. Your engine can end up locking up as a result but you may be able to escape with no damage in lower RPM’s as compared to when you are driving in higher RPM’s.
What causes an engine to seize or lock up?
Now that you know what a seized or locked engine is, you might be wondering what causes an engine to lock up in the first place. For starters, it can happen when you aren’t changing the oil frequently or when your engine runs out of oil. This is why you need to always have your oil changed whenever you can so that you can make sure that the engine is lubricated well enough to prevent sudden engine failure.
Meanwhile, engines that have been hydro locked can lock up whenever the water takes the space that the air should take up inside the engine. As a result, the pistons won’t be able to fully reach the top of their stroke and will cause the engine to seize up. This happens when you are driving your car in a flood.
Extreme heat can also cause an engine to lock up. This happens in cars with low-pressure fuel systems because of how old they already are. So, what happens is that extreme heat will transform fuel from liquid to gas before it even reaches the engine. As such, the engine will be starved for fuel and will not start due to how it lacks the fuel it needs to run even though you actually just filled the tank up.
Can a bad starter lock an engine up?
Now that we know what a locked engine is and what usually causes an engine to lock up, we now have to talk about whether or not a bad starter can actually cause an engine to lock up. Simply put, the answer to that is yes.
So, the reason why a bad starter can lock an engine up can be traced to how the starter is primarily responsible for starting your engine. As such, if your starter is broken or bad and struggles to work, it may end up also forcing the engine to struggle to work as well. This can cause a sudden failure inside the engine not as a result of any of the above mentioned circumstances but as a result of how the starter will be forcing the engine to work harder just to start up.
That said, if you have a bad starter and you keep on forcing it to work, your engine might end up shouldering much of the burden of a bad starter as well. This can lead it to lock up when the different moving parts produce more as they are now working harder.
Sources:
https://carbrain.com/blog/is-your-engine-locked-up-heres-what-you-do
https://community.cartalk.com/t/can-a-starter-lock-up-solid/2400
