Last night was driving home and slowed to a stop, suddenly the engine cut out and I immediately put the clutch in, gauge lights flickered and the car made the grinding noise like I was trying to turn it over when it was already running.

Shut it off and got it going again but kept having this cutout and starter issue even though I wasn't turning the key to ignition.

I shut it off for a few minutes and sort of got things running again and moving up to speed, with sporadic engine/guage light cutouts - the weird starter issue subsided though. I would immediately put in the clutch coast a bit then engage the gear again like I was jump starting it to force the engine on again.

At some point the speedometer guage lights just stayed off (chk engine/tpm on, a norm) and limped towards my mechanics garage repeating this jumping process every few minutes.

Eventually all the guage lights came back on and everything seemed fine the last 10 miles of my trip. When I parked it at my mechanic I tested to see if it would start again, and nothing. No starter clicks but guage lights were all normal. Headlights, fan, radio, horn all good. One thing we noticed is depressing the clutch all the way made all the lights on the speedo guage turn off and on with the clutch movement.

Some thoughts are faulty ignition switch and clutch safety swtich but figured id post here to see if anyone else had seen anything like this.

Thank you in advance for input.

 

For what it’s worth - if anyone sees this and experiences the same symptoms, the starter was replaced and alleviated the problem.

 

Thanks for the follow up. Was gonna ask if you tested the alternator. Would have never guessed a bad starter would give such varied symptoms.