Hi Fellas and gals , DJ here and I've been away awhile but once again am sucked back to the plethra of knowledge of this group. Listen here and see if ya can help me out. I have a brand new deep cycle battery in my 53 ford f-100 and every morning I come out its dead. Now I fully charge it and it still wont crank my 360 fe. The red lead from the battery getts hot as hell to the starter cylinoid and only if I also hook up my Dodge ram with jumpers can I get the engine to barely crank. I have checked the timing for and aft to see if this helped and still hard cranking. I pulled the neg from the batt and put a test light in between and the light comes on with truck off. Do you guys think it is the starter, batt, or starter cylinoid or i guess just what do you think I should do ...Thanks DJ oh and once the truck starts it runs great and then if I stop somewhere and the motor is hot it seems to crank right over when I get back in

 

If you are getting a test light ON with every thing off, you have a power drain. The reason for dead battery. Make sure every thing is off, and the radio memory lead if you have a modern radio. If it still comes on, I would disconnect the alt bat lead and see if it goes out. Of so you have a bad diode in the alternator.

If the leads are heating up you may need to replace them with a larger gage wire. Try bypassing the soleniod and see if the starter will spin over. If so replace the solenoid. Also make sure your ground to the block is good. If all is good replace the starter.

 

I'd start by assuring "all" the connections are good and clean. Blue's advice is spot on on a diagnosis. One thing I can recall happening on my old Torino was the volt regulator would stick and drain the battery. Replaced the 20.00 part and tada.. However this never caused any hot cables while starting.(thats most likely a ground/connctn issue)