Electrical help! Cause or effect?
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Electrical help! Cause or effect?
1983 f150 starts and idles fine. Once on the road we can get about a mile and it dies. While still coasting it'll start back up a few times before we have to sit a couple minutes before starting back up and doing the same thing. It started this after a pretty rough four wheeling expedition, on the way home the headlights went out and the dashboard lights stayed on when the truck was off. We thought it was a loose ground wire so we thought we fixed it but since then we have the symptoms above. Any help would be appreciated.
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Check the voltage at the battery with the engine running, should be ~14.5 volts. There's a fusilbe link between the alternator and starter solenoid, make sure it's not partially burned out.
When you say you fixed a loose ground, did you replace the negative battery cable?
When you say you fixed a loose ground, did you replace the negative battery cable?
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We fixed the loose ground that made the lights go haywire at the back. There is a fusible link that we found going to the battery that we wrapped back up. It's a yellow and green wire by the passenger wheel well. My dad swears it's not electrical I haven't been able to run any of my own tests. The negative battery cable ground going to the starter motor I s tore the f@&& up so he put another one on the alternator bracket and the other one is still connected. I have 5$ saying its electrical and he says its gas.
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Yesterday he wiggled the starter/ignition (where the key goes in) while rolling down the road after it died and it started back up. Today he cleared out the gas line and it seemed to run fine for about an hour. If it's gas why would it shut off and come back on just from wiggling the switch, and if electrical why would clearing the gas line out help? It's a mechanical pump .. Quite a puzzle
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We rebuilt the carb, replaced the distrubitor, timing gears , intake manifold gasket, and tried a different coil and ignition box. Yesterday just for fun I wiggled the fuel tank selector switch when we started to die and that kept it going for 3or 4 tries before that didn't work anymore. It will purr like a kitten all day long while idling.
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Well some of that just had to be done anyway and we like to mess around in the shop.. But messing around has turned into a chore. I tried to run some diagnostics with the multimeter but he came out and assured me that there's nothing electrical on this truck except for , ( everything that is messing up in my opinion,) so we are taking it to work tomorrow I'll keep the symptoms up to date. We don't have a timing light. Next time I get an hour or so alone I'll come back with some electrical diagnostics. I'm hoping he was right but gas doesn't effect lights and wires so... Maybe he will listen after it dies on us again. Is there something that would cause complete electrical overload? Im just afraid after we replace all the electrical parts they will all blow again
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