car made noise, now wont start

[rcrabbe]

Greetings gentleman,

First off this is my gf's car and shes not the best at describing car problems or sounds.

Long story short she was driving and she said it sounded like she ran over a metal stick. She looked in her mirror, but nothing behind her. She came to a stop, and tried going but it had trouble getting up to speed, but said after she got above 40 it seemed fine. She parked and went to restart it but it would not start. I asked her if there was any oil in it and she said "i think so" which means there wasnt. She said it was super low so i want to say she seized the motor up in it. When i got to the car, i turned it over and the starter is just spinning. Intially i thought it was the timing belt snapping but now i think that the motor has locked up and the starter has stripped because she thinks turning it over and over again will make it start!

Any ideas what it could be?

 

[melsg5]

Without seeing the car it is difficult to answer. it could be a bad starter solenoid or something more major like you have already mentioned.

 

[rcrabbe]

but would the starter going out cause the car to stuter and have a hard time accelerating. The way i see it is that the motor started to seize then once she stopped, and kept trying to start it, the teeth in the starter stripped.

 

[melsg5]

stuter and acceleration problems can be caused by many things but not the starter. The spinning starter could also be the bendix gear in the starter not engaging the teeth on the ring gear. The fact that she felt she ran over something makes me wonder if a starter bolt fell out. I would think the oil pressure light would have come on before the motor seizing due to low oil.