car will not start

Last April I purchased a 1987 Vette w/32000 miles. The car runs great. My problem is at time when your try to start the car you will hear one click as if the battery was weak. You don't hear multiple clicks as you normally would with a weak battery. Had my mechanic check the car and he said the battery was weak and should be replaced. I replaced  the battery and I still have the starting problem. Next he replaced the starter. I still have the problem. This is an intermittent  problem and you never know when it will or will not start. Normally if you wait 5 or 10 minutes and you try to start in again it will start. I have disconnected the battery cables and reconnected them and the car would start.  Any ideas as to what I should look for?

You have a bad/loose/corroded connection somewhere in the "Start" circuit. One click usually means that the amperage/heat going thru the connection for "Start" was enough to kill the connection, thus making it dead for the time. Once it cools a bit, it may make a good enough connection the next time to start. You said disconnecting/connecting the battery cables would allow it to start, so I would start there...check the batt cable terminals for any corrosion, the start tracing the GROUND cable down to the frame...

have to really watch the grounds as joel said. corvettes are known to have grounding issues.

Joel, my 1989 is doing the same thing. NEW batt/starter. do you know WHERE the main harness grounds to the frame? I am getting NO CODES. It usually starts/runs for 30 seconds then stalls. THAT'S where the similiar starter problem comes in. It WILL fire up on a shot of ether though. 40 psi at the rail., new injectors last year/filters/egr too.............HELP!!

had that exact same problem on my 90 kenworth. drove me nuts. changed everything, batteries,alternator,starter hot cables. finally found problem was in ground cable. cable had been spliced together during manufactiring process before plastic coating had been put on cable. when it corroded inside plastic coating, you could not see it. once i replaced the ground cable i never had a starting problem again.

Joel, thanks...got  about a 1/4 turn on the grounding nut on the bellhousing. Connection was clean,as were the cables & NEW batt/bolts Chipped away the chassi grounds of frame paint and re-attached,took the started out and emery clothed the armature and cleaned/checked the brushes. Starts NOW...but I just dont TRUST it. Wanna yake out the motor & put a 383 GM crate block in it with an old fashioned carb/NO computer!  BUT it gets 29mpg   ;-)

That is great news

I don't know what happened to the rest of my post above, but I did originally mention checking the bellhousing bolts/studs for grounds. Those are bad spots....hard to get to, and they seem to loosen up frequently.
The first day I drove my '85 home from the shop, it started acting stoopid...the A/C was kicking on/off, lights flickering, and the engine acted like it wanted to die. I made it home, but the next day I put it up on a lift, and, sure enough, the ground wires on the driver side bellhousing bolt were loose as crap!. I wound up removing the grounds from that spot, and moving them to the next stud down, so I could get a good, solid torque on the nut. Haven't had a problem since, and this was in '98!

Hi everyone i'm from france and have a similare issue on my C4 convertible from 1990 the car wont start when is little hot and wont let me press the gas more then 2000 rpm or it's stall :( have changed the TPS , the ECM , the O2 sensor , all spark plug 8 exactly and the car wont work corretly :( . have check the diag code on dashboard have plug a wire on aldl connector Grounded the G input and got no error code .

Please i really need help because i love my car