My friend has a 89 Trooper that he bought with a dead transmission. He replaced the tranny with that of his wrecked 88 Trooper and put a new clutch in as well. The problem though is the starter. The original starter in the new 89 trooper was turning over incredibly sluggishly and then finally starting up after a few seconds. He thought it was a bad started so he replaced it with the one from the wrecked 88 and it was having the same problem. He also replaced the battery and that didn't help at all.

Lately it's gotten so bad that he has to push start it just to get the thing going and it's proven to be a big problem. Now also he's been experiencing a whooshing sound near the peak of the compression stroke that's concerning, but it wasn't apparent until lately. And on the compression stroke sometimes the Tach surges almost up to 2000rpm and it still fails to start.

Now he has gotten it to start up sporaticly, but still he needs to get this solved as soon as possible. What could it possibly be? My best guess is that the new battery he got is crap and doesn't have enough cold cranking amps to turn the engine quick enough.

p.s. I'm writing this post as a sort of bet with my friend because he refuses to believe that I can figure this out in 5 minutes on a car forum. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> So please help me, I got quite a bit riding on this.

Thanks guys!