I just had to post this one.

I've replaced 5 crank position sensors. All have been away from the home or the shop at inopertune times. Raining, freezing cold, motel middle of Nowhere, late night trying to back trailer into parking spot. Needless to say it is a real inconvience at best. BTW all of these had crank position codes.

I keep the proper tools in the truck tool bag so tools aren't the problem. It is tough at my age to be crawing around under the truck when it is snowing or other weather.

So yeaterday I'm all loaded up to go play senior baseball 1st game and I come out and go to start the truck. In my hast to get going my fingers slipped off the key just as I started cranking. I tried again to start the truck but no start, just crank crank and nothing. i quickly got out the code reader and guess what no codes except the Smarty presensence code. So I cleared it and cranked again. No start so I checked codes again and now there are no codes at all.

Well I got my wife's car and went to the ball game.

On the way home I ordered a crank position sensor as that was the cure the last time I had a no start.

Now here come the meat of the story. This has happened before at least 3-4 times, mostly in the winter with gloves on. My fingers slip off the key just as it starts to turn over. i've usually just cussed at it and tried again to no avail. However a while back one of these times I also had a low battery so I disconnected the batteries and recharged them. Now it started right up. And just the Smarty code was present. Keep this in mind now.

So today I got the crank position sensor and I was ready to crawl around under the truck again. Just for drill I disconnected the batteries for 5 minutes. Then hooked them up good and tight. I turned the key "on" and waited for the "wait to start" to go out along with all the other checks, then carefully hit the starter. "Boom" it started right up. hahaha I laughed to myself. so I let it run a few minutes then shut it off and checked the codes again....none at all not even the Smarty code. so I reloaded the Smarty and the truck started right up again.

I don't know what happens when you do a "mis start" like this but it pays to wait a while and see if it corrects itself.

Apparently the computer looses track of where everything is at when this happens. Initially I also did a "bump" to check the lift pump and it did not run either.
However today right before I did the initial test I also did the starter bump for the lift pump and it ran fine.

 

Thats happened to me a few times with numb fingers from the cold. Never had it fail to start although it did take a bit more cranking then normal to fire up.

 

Interesting to hear..... I would think that your fingers slipping off the key just as you turn it over would be the same as "bumping the starter". But for some unforeseen reason, what you're doing must be different. And in regards to the batteries, the ISB is very particular about proper voltage and amperage. It seems that when the batteries are weak or if one of the two is bad then it can cause weird phantom issues. This is especially more of a problem in the cold weather because of the amount of energy the grid heaters pull from the charging system. Short drives in cold weather will deplete the batteries if they're not allowed enough drive time to recharge.