Everything is out and not working. swapped the battery for known good one and still nothing. It's an 87 short bed, dual tanks 300 Six 4-speed with A/C fuel injected.

No power at all, nothing, no dome light, do blower motor, no lights, no annoying buzzer (only good thing about this). Nothing seems to work. Yesterday it had a problem and would not turn over, the solenoid just clicked really fast. It's a four speed so I got a push start and drove home and parked it.

Before getting the push start, and wondering if it had a bad solenoid I was able to borrow a wrench and disconnect the battery cable from the starter to the solenoid. I touched it to the positive side of the battery and it did nothing but arch real bad. Decided to push start and work on the next day. Today there is nothing at all, where before it had power to everything?

HELP!!

Joe

 

In the diagram below find spot #3 on your truck. You should have the battery + wire there and also a smaller wire or wires there. Look at these smaller wires. They feed power to the whole truck. Somewhere in the wire you should have a rubber colored thing in the wire. This is a fusible link, andmay be burnt in two. You can buy replacements at the auto store.

 

There are I belive 3 fusable links coming from the #3 location. They are not burnt but I have not tested them for continity yet.

Where are others located at?

Would a bad or stuck starter armature or something inside it be to ground or burnt up? When I touched the starter lead (cable) to the battery I would have thought the starter would turn and turn the engine over. It acted like I just touched a ground to the positive terminal instead. I think the black out issue might be something differnet than the starter issue. Or could the starter be grounded out inside and when I hit the key it blew a fusable link or links? Is there a main power fusable link?

Thanks
Joe

 

The starter is not in the picture till you spring the key over to crank the engine.

From what you describe, it sounds like your original problem was a bad connection at the battery, or a discharged or bad battery. It ran fine, but would not crank.

Only after your testing, did the truck go dead, so I am going to assume whatever you did burnt out some of the fusible links.

 

After touching the starter cable to the pos bat post it would still make the solnoid fast ticking sound but would not crank.

Whne I got it home and parked it and went to start to see if it was hot start issue everything is dead.

I checked fusable links at the solnoid and found 2 others on the drivers side fender with little ones so I checked those. All are good. They show continuity through them.

Joe

 

Well I have kept looking. Took the starter out and it has continuity between the terminal and the case. This tells me something in the starter is to ground. I put jumper cable to it and it turns but it also arcs real bad when applying power to it. All cables have zero resitance. I removed the cables also. I put my jumper cables from the battery to ground and to the solnoid and now have power!!

I am thinking I have a bad cable or cables. They might have been toasted cranking a starter that has a problem. Like I said though zero resistance with my meter in OHMS MOHMS or KOHMS?................Strange??? I don't have it back together so I don't know if it fixed. I still have to go buy new cables and a starter.

Joe

 

You can't test a starter with an ohmmeter. The windings in it are huge, and there are not very many of them. That's why you are getting such a low reading on the meter. The reason it sparks is because there is so much current surging through the motor. When it's turning the engine, it can draw over 100 amps.

 

Got zero OHMS from cables.

I get a continuity reading from the cable hook up on the starter to the case. I don't This tells me I have something internal in the starter going to ground on the case right? I don't think I should be able to get continuity from the terminal hook up from the solnoid cable hook up to the case, that would mean when the starter is engauged to start it's sending a positive to ground correct?

 

No, read my previous post. You are going to get continuity from the starter + terminal to the case, if the starter is good. You can't check a shorted starter with a meter. The elec shops use a special piece of equipment called a "growler" that can check the windings in the starter.

You also cannot check to see if a cable is good with an ohmmeter. Your ohmmeter is not accurate below 1 ohm.

If your cable had a resistance of .1 ohms, you would consider that continuity, and the cable is good. But E=I xR. If we draw 100 amps through the cable, the voltage drop would be E=100amps x .1 ohms. E=10 volts. That means if you have a 12 volt battery, and a cable with .1 ohms resistance, then the cable would gobble of 10 of the 12 volts, and you would only have 2 volts left to run the starter. If you have .05 ohms resistance, the cable would drop 5 volts of the 12 volts, leaving only 7 volts going to the starter. It might work on this, but would be a little slow.

I am glad you have a meter and are using it. But you are dealing with very low voltages and very high currents, so the rules are a little different. The best way to troubleshoot something like this is put your meter on a volts scale that will read 12 volts. Put the probe on the part of the circuit you want to monitor, and then watch the meter while you try to start the truck. If you did this at the starter terminal, and the meter read pretty much zero when you tried to start the truck, you know you are dropping voltage upstream. You can then move the probe upstream till you find the problem.