Car makes a whirring noise when I turn the key (and the windshield wipers come on???)

Was doing this about a month ago, and I was told it was the starter. Starter was replaced with a Denso.

Video attached. Anybody have any ideas?

Hello,

Sounds like the Battery can't provide the required Power to spin the Engine, here is a thread about it. Check the Battery Voltage when Cranking the Engine, see how low it dips, if it's lower than 11V-ish Volts, the battery is either Dead or Discharged. If the Battery is indeed Discharged, seeing that it's been about a Month since the issue started, it is toast either way, batteries don't like sitting with no Charge.

As for the wipers, sorry if it comes across weird, but are you sure they are turned Off?

Hope this helps and best of luck!

How confident are you about the state of the battery and its terminals? I recall a similar sound and non-start in my '05 after an emergency replacement of a failed positive battery terminal. The handy replacement from the autoparts store was a piece of lead crap, and I somehow failed to tighten it sufficiently or stripped it or something before it suddenly wouldn't start within a week. I hacked it on tighter, got home and ordered this proper terminal resembling the original: .

Checked the battery with a multimeter and it's reading 11.8 volts.

Took the cables off the terminals and wire brushed everything. Multimeter is reading 0 ohms testing both ends.

I replaced the starter relay and the new one does the same thing.

11.8 volts is a half dead battery head over to your local auto parts store and have them load test it.

That's a Discharged battery alright.

Make sure to read the thread linked earlier before you do so, in this case, you need to find a place that will Charge the Battery, and will then use an actual Carbon Pile Tester, this is one of those cases when a newer Digital Tester may fail to spot the problem, the Battery appears for have sat Discharged for about a Month, which is enough to destroy some of the Plates in the Battery, it may pass the test for now, but it may never return to its Full Capacity.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

Auto parts stores I've seen have a device that charges the battery up then does a series of tests and spits out a health report. They replace probably 100's of batteries every year so such a machine is necessary especially when people are trying to get a warranty claim.

Hopefully yeah, but I've seen it being done either way around here, especially if the Battery is still in the car and no one is really interested in taking it out. Either way, it's worth making sure that it's done right, especially with no efforts being done by any Parts Store to cure my trust issues.