Hello,
I have a 1989 ford f250 with a 302v8. My truck simply would not start one morning. When I turned the key I could hear a deffinet click under the hood but the engine would not turn over. Previous to this I had to replace the solenoid twice for a similar problem. After replaceing the solenoid this time nothing had changed. So I pulled the starter and had it bench tested at my local autoparts store. It tested fine, so the clerk suggested it may be a faulty ground. So I visually inspected all the cables pulled the ground cable from the block cleaned it with a wire brush cleand the block bolt and reattatched the cable. I cleaned all battery terminals and cable terminals and tightened for firm connection. ( prior to pulling starter I hooked up jumper cables to another running auto to check that battery power was not an issue, I have 2 year old battery properly rated and lights/ radio work and do not dim when attempting to start. )

At this point I decided to test the starter without re-installing it. I hooked up jumper cables from ground terminal to starter case and from solenoid to starter positive stud. When I jump solenoid in this configuration the starter turns very slowly and smokes either at starter or negative battery terminal. I get same results when bench testing starter useing battery only, as per chiltons suggestion.

I can only assume at this point that my starter is bad and that the bench test the parts store performed was faulty. But before commiting the money to this (wich is very tight at this point) I would like to know If I am missing anything obvious. Any comments or suggestion would be very much appreciated.

Thank You
Joe

 

I am suspicious of the smoke at the negative battery terminal. That tells me there is something wrong in that area(too much resistance).

 

Yes I am curious about that myself, but what kinc of resitance? I have scrubbed the terminals clean. There is no way that a battery can have internal resitance is there?

 

Sometimes corrosion will creep underneath the insulation of the wire where you can't see it.

If you have a voltmeter, you can set it up at different places and see where the biggest voltage drop is.

You can put the meter on the battery, and then try the starter. If you have a reading that is somewhere near 10-12 volts when the starter is turning slow, then you know the battery is good.

You can then move the positive meter lead down the line, closer and closer to the starter, till you find the point where the voltage drops dramatically. Right before this point will be the problem(high resistance) causing the voltage drop.

You can also move the negative lead around to check the voltage drop on it too.

 

Cable corosion is the main reason I tried the starter useing jumper cables only. Even when the battery is not connected to the rest of the truck at all and only the starter is in the ceruit (useing fairly new jumper cables), The stater still surns very slowly and smokes at either the starter or neg battery terminal.
This indicates to me a huge voltage drain some where. Which is why I had the starter bech tested at the auto parts store. A place I would assume has a reason to find something wrong with my starter. But it passed the test there with flying colors. My plan at this point is to take the batery and starter to the store and replace one of them. But I would like to know ahead of time that this is necissary. Unfortunately I do not have access to any electrical testing equipment at this time. So my options are fairly limited, but I do appreciate the feed back and any other thoughts you have would be most welcome.

 

Well, do you have another set of jumper cables? Or could you rig it up where you would not need the ones you have now? What I am thinking is you could use the jumper cables to "jump" across the problem.

The first thing you could do is hook the jumper cables directly from the battery posts to the starter, and see if it turns over good.

I think if the starter turns over good in the above test, you could go ahead and put the starter back in the truck. Hook everything up, and then if we are suspecting the battery cable is bad, take one side of the jumper cables and jump form the battery post to the starter relay post. The try to crank the truck. If it cranks a little better, then you can be fairly sure the problem lies in that area. Don't expect stellar performance from the jumper cable though. Even it has increased resistance compared to the proper battery cable.

 

I have already done that, the starter dose not turn good when hooked up only to the battery usening the jumper cables

 

jln_Wasabi

Have you replaced the starter I believe the starter is grounding out as it turns even if it tested good any time an armature type motor does not spin as it should then it is at fault.


75pup