Insanely new to working on cars, very little knowledge, my ride is a 2000 eddie bauer edition ford expedition 5.4liter engine.
I triggered the problem to my alternator since my car ran just the battery never charged, I got it to ride buy using a battery charger and going where I needed to go, well what happened was my dad messed around with my voltage regulator because he thought that might be the problem, now the car wont turn over at all even with the charged battery, it wont even click or do anything, all the gauges and lights work fine it seems, also, the voltage regular is hooked up properly but its not grounded (screwed) into the metal of the car its kind of hanging there at the moment, could that be causing problems? I was thinking maybe it needs to be grounded but im not sure, like I said extremely ignorant when it comes to cars. If it would start with the charged battery I would just go buy an alternator, but im thinking something else is wrong now? thank you
Are you sure the device you are talking about is the voltage regulator? I think the regulator is built into the alternator but I could be wrong about that. Whenever you have trouble like this you should check the fuses and make sure they are okay. There could be a problem with the safety switch if the starter isn’t working. Ignition power needs to pass through it to the energize the starter solenoid.
@Cougar, you are not wrong. The voltage regulator IS built into the alternator on these trucks. If the alternator is the problem, they are fairly easy to replace, and good remans are relatively cheap. I don’t know what kind of red-neck engineering his dad messed around with, but fooling around with the electrical system like that is very dangerous to the many electronic modules in this truck.
Now, it sounds like the starter is shot. You’d better get this thing fixed right, or your going to keep breaking things.
Thanks for the info @BustedKnuckles. Since the alternator does have an internal regulator I have to wonder what “dad” was working on and left hanging. Maybe it is the starter solenoid. If it is then I would have to think it does need to be grounded to the chassis for the coil to make a ground connection.