Hi Everyone,

New to the forum, been snagging tips and tricks where I can, but I'm about 2-3 nautical miles over my head on this 1989 Georgie Boy Motorhome I bought (on purpose, wtf) a few years back.

I knew it was going to be a project, and the price reflected. but it has turned out to be a much larger project that I anticipated. Without going into all of the gory details I'll fast forward to where I am now.
f-53 John Deere chassis, 460 auto w/ Holley 4160
upon first breakdown (about a mile from point of purchase), I didn't have good spark and after buying new plugs, wires, and a coil for an 89 460, I realized the coil wasn't even close to the right thing, that's the first I discover that this is not an 89 460, but a 78 or 79 ( can't remember off the top of my head now). Anyways, got the coil going, and pretty quickly killed the starter, replaced the starter and fired right up, then died with what turned out to be bad electrical connections. had it towed to a place that did little to nothing to fix my issue other than jiggling some connections, but they did say my starter was bad. which I thought was pretty odd anyways, they replaced it and got it running and I ran it home. Other than breaking down once with no power (fixed on the side of the road with tightening the ground) it ran great the whole way home 2+ hours. Once home I pulled the carb for a rebuild and when I had it back on it would only start with a shot of fluid and a really fresh charged battery, seemed like the starter was bad again. I decided to replace every power cable from the battery to anything else with really high-quality 2-gauge wire and regrounded the main ground the block at the starter bolt. Crank was better but not great. I pulled the starter to test, Bad. Replaced it and the solenoid and crank were strong and would start right up with fluid, but I lost my fuel pump somewhere in the mix. So after no luck tracking down the fuel pump issue I added a whole new relay hooked to a toggle run through the ignition (I know that's not ideal, if I get this thing running I will add an inertia switch) Anyways, the truck started first crank from here on out and would run just fine where it was parked. Today I needed to do some work up on the roof, so I needed to move it to a different spot in my yard, 15 minutes and 10 yards back and forth in drive and reverse to jockey it to where I needed it and it dies. I go to restart it and the starter will barely turn over. I went around to check for hot wires, terminals, solenoid, even the starter was cool enough to touch. Could this thing really just be eating starters? any idea why that would happen after moving it a few feet? I've had it stall out like that before when moving, but I always thought it could have been from the fuel pump only working intermittently.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm sure I gave you a bunch of info you don't need and left out stuff you do, so please let me know if you need any more info to help. I appreciate it.

Jim

 

One thing that jumps out at me is a grounding issue. You fixed one, how many more need attention?
One can never have enough grounds.

Start with BATT to engine, Batt to frame, BATT to cab, engine to frame, engine to cab...make sure all grounds are to a clean, unpainted metal surface.

Also check that the starter solenoid is properly grounded to a clean, unpainted piece of metal, as is the voltage regulator.

...And the starter is bolted to the clean, de-greased converter housing.

Take it from there.

 

Thanks, got rained out all day today here in Raleigh, but I did go out to check my fuel pressure on a hunch to see why it starved out to begin with and either the fuel pump has failed or the brand new Painless relay kit did, I'm leaning to the former, while I'm under there I will check/replace/add some fresh grounds where I can. If there is no luck there I will pull the starter again and bench test.

Another question I came up with from reading some other threads, could it be possible that I'm cooking starters because I don't have enough Cranking Amps? I have a brand new Everstart (Walmart) Battery I recall it was the highest CCA there at the time, 750 maybe? I originally thought the battery was junk, but I brought it back to have it tested and it was fine. Perhaps it's fine, but just not enough? Seems like everyone would have that problem though.

 

Fuel pump replacement is a good choice. I have no experience with a Painless relay kit.

If the ground circuits are loose, greasy or non existent, the starter would work a bit harder to find a ground...but the physical connections - nuts/bolts on the starter should help some if they're clean/solid.