A guy at work is having problems with his Dodge Caravan. He'll come out to it after running into a store, and it won't start. No clicking, but everything else electrical works. He'll wait 45 minutes and it will start. The van had it's starter replaced a year ago. It's got 80K miles on it. It's a 98. Anyone know of anything that goes bad on those things chronically? I had something similar happen when my ignition control module on my 626 was going out. But that was at 200K miles. But then again, this is a domestic. It told the guy to pull his starter and get it tested. Any other ideas?

Use a Vat 40 or equivalent and do an amperage draw test on the starter. Could be many things. First thing to look at (obviously) is why the starter isn't getting B+, and go from there.

We had one in at the shop (I'm a mechanic at Heller Lincoln-Mercury-Dodge in Pontiac) the other day like that. Crank it over and get a buddy to tap on the starter until it starts. What happens is the starter burns a small hole in the contact ring every time it starts the engine. Over time that contact ring has little to no contact surface for the starter to strike. Tapping on it makes the ring rotate slightly and hopefully hit a good patch. The symptoms were exactly the same as you describe but I have no idea why it would fail within a year. If you get it to start this way just replace the starter.