Voltage problem? New starter.
 

Over the past couple weeks my car keeps getting harder to crank. It take a second or 2 to get it going.

So after a flooding incident i replaced the stock starter and i charged my Optima red top battery. The standing voltage reads 12.1 - 12.4 but its still taking too long to crank. The battery is only about a year old.

Any ideas what else it could be?

i was having same problem a few weeks back. turned out i needed a new alternator and new plugs. 8's running like a champ now.

New alternator? Didn't think about that. I changed out my starter, BHR ingition, plugs, cleaned terminals ect two days ago and it takes about 10 seconds to crank. Did you install it yourself?

Still can be a bad battery.

do you have after market stereo?

Open up the pass through to the trunk.

Insert head. Is trunk light on, draining your battery?

Do a "Load Test" on the battery; if it passes, make sure all the connections are clean and tight and have the charging system checked out.

Ya im gonna do this. I have a stock headunit.
A 1 farad capacitor in the trunk with a 350 watt amp, is it possible that the cap is draining the batt?

cap won't be a complete circuit until the audio system is turned on, unless installed wrong (if i remember caps correctly)

I'd do a voltage drop test to see what voltage the battery falls to while cranking, anything below 10V is bad.

I dont know why everyone switches to optimas, theyre only advantage is in situations where you are going to use it, completely drain it and then recharge it, other then that they have little to no advantage, and ive seen more problems from them (and the wiring done to make them work) then a properly maintained regular battery.

kevin.

Not a clear description of the problem. It is cranking for 10 seconds, but is it cranking normally or slowly? Just because it takes 10 seconds to fire doesn't necessarily implicate the battery. In fact, it takes at least some health in the battery to crank for 10 seconds straight and get a successful start on a rotary. You do mention you charged the battery -- what prompted this? Was the resting voltage different than what you now report?

+1 on the load test.

Startup used to be instant. Now its about a 3-4 second crank. Just doesnt seem right. I charged the battery with a trickle charger because i killed it when i was trying to unflood the car. The voltage has stayed about the same. Some times dips to 11.9 at the lowest.