I bought a 2000 F/250 SD 7.3 turbo diesel about 3 months ago. Fixing little things here and there, rear leave springs,headlight switch, brakes.Nothing electrical or major mechanical. Was out running for parts yesterday and truck did great all day.
Was home for about an hour and went leave again and it wouldn't do anything.
Was like a completely dead battery except they arent. I turned the lights on and tried to crank it to see if it would draw the voltage down but it didn't. Wouldn't crank at all. Moved gear selector from park to neutral to see if that made a change, still nothing. Anyone have any ideas where to start so I'm not running in circles ?
I'm new to fords and to deisels so any help would be greatly apreciated.

 

Do you have any power at all? I was working on my 7.3 the other day and everything completely died, no power anywhere. It ended up being the main feed wire leading into the fuse box broke just behind the battery on the drivers sides. If you look behind it you'll see a wire coming from below the battery and a little box that says high voltage, it broke right there.

 

Thanks, but I have power to everything, just won't crank. All lights, heater, radio all still work. Just won't crank.

 

Neutral safety switch or starter solenoid would be my guess.

 

Agreed.

You could try crossing the terminals on the starter solenoid to see if you crank. If you don't, that would be a good place to start.

 

Thanks, I was going to start with the switch, but was hopeing someone else had this problem and it was a simple fix. LOL
I'll keep you updated as to what I find.

Thanks again, Mike

 

Thanks, I'll give that a shot and see. Have a buddy bringing me a switch. And seeing as it's raining and I can't get it into the shop. I think I'll start with the switch.

Thanks for the help and I'll keep updating as I go.

Thanks, Mike

 

did u have the batteries load tested? i know someone who has a 7.3 and it wouldnt start the other day. he thought it was the starter but turned out that one battery wasn't charged enough and it was enough to not crank. everything else worked with god power.

 

If the batteries were low, you would still hear the starter solenoid click and the dash lights would dim or go out when trying to crank.

 

it may just have bad contact on the starter solenoid.....

 

Your model has another starter solenoid bolted to the inside right fender liner in the engine compartment (passenger side, a few inches away from the battery. There is a little wire on that solenoid that can simply be pulled off the terminal. It doesn't unscrew, just a clearance fit that holds it on ( looks like a 90 degree vacuum hose fitting). Verify it's connected and receives 12v when you attempt to crank. If no voltage is present there then you might have an ignition switch issue.

EDIT: Side note. It's possible the previous owner may have installed some sort of starter kill switch. When you were working on it previously...did you run across any non OEM looking switches or buttons? Perhaps you bumped a switch by accident?

Good luck.

 

Thanks Greg, it had some type of alarm on it when my buddy bought it but he disconnected all that stuff. I'll check out the solenoid in the morning as long as it quits raining. Did'nt get to do anything to it because of rain today.

 

Ok, found a faulty solenoid on the passenger fender well, replaced it, now my batteries wont hold a charge long enough to start ? Could the faulty solenoid have drained them so far down that they wont hold a charge ?

 

Sounds like one of your batteries may have an internal short, causing lower voltage. One bad battery will pull the other down pretty quickly once a charger is removed.