Hi everyone. Im lost as where to go next. I bought this truck new and its been garage keep. Has 85,000 miles and has worked perfect all these years.
It acted like the battery was getting weak last weekend. Sunday it just went dead when I went to start it. I checked and the battery was 9 years old so I figured that was the problem. Put new battery in and still nothing. I have no 12v past the starter solenoid. Nothing inside works at all. Where do I check under the hood for power? Is there a fuse or relay from the starter solenoid that those wires go to? This is a 460 gas truck. There is a fuse box on the drivers side but I couldnt find any of the fuses getting 12v. There are some relays in there. Do any of these kill the voltage?
Thanks for any help.
Bud

 

Your battery + cable should be a short one going to the solenoid. Under this large terminal on the solenoid, there should be smaller wires. In these smaller wires are rectangle colored rubber things made into the wire, these are fusible links. It's unusual for these to just go bad, they usually burn out when someone hooks the battery up backwards or tries to jump the truck with backwards jumper cables.

But this is where the truck gets all it's power. If you follow this smaller wire or wires, you will run into more fusible links and possibly some factory splices also. Sometimes these will get corroded and not pass current through.

Here's a schematic of that area.

http://www.revbase.com/BBBMotor/Wd/DownloadPdf?id=66760

You can see they have two fusible links feeding the underhood fuse box, fusible links A and B.

On the 3rd page down in that link you can see where fuses 17, 15 and 10 in the underhood fuse box feed the ignition switch.

 

Thank you for the reply. I had looked at the wiring schematics that were posted in another thread. Fusible links should be ok. Nothing has been hooked up backwards or jumped. Im leaning towards a corroded connection under the battery box maybe. I cant find any voltage in the under hood fuse box. I just wasnt sure if there was something in that box that killed all the power. Im guessing that stays hot all the time when connections are good? If so then thats the problem over by the battery.
Thanks again!!
Bud

 

Ok update on the problem. First mistake was checking current with the test light grounded to the battery not the body. After grounding to the body found that the ground cable was bad. Replaced cable and everything went to working like it was suppose to. Sometimes its the little things that drive you crazy!!
Thanks Bud

 

How was the ground cable bad? If it was burnt up check your large ground cable from the battery to the block. Sometimes if that gets a bad connection, the starter tries to get it's ground through the other little grounds and burns them up.