New Starter, New battery, New alternator, but truck will not crank. All the fuses are good. All terminals are clean. All i hear is a click and everything turns on except the truck itself. This morning the battery was dead for no reason so i jumped it and it got me down the street to my girlfriends house, then it started and got us to get food but when i wanted to go home it wouldn’t start or get jumped so i had to get it towed. What could it possibly be?
You need to find out what drained your new batt. The starting system needs a full and healthy batt to function properly. That needs to be sorted first. The alternator is a common culprit for draining batteries sometimes even new ones will do this. When they drain batteries…they will be warm to the touch on a cold engine. You can also diagnose with a multi meter.
Once you have a known fully charged and healthy batt…and you still have this issue… It goes something like this for causes…
If you hear a click and nothing else happens it could mean that your starter solenoid has dirty or burned contacts internally. You can bypass the solenoids by bridging the large connections that go to the solenoid… this will power your starter directly without the solenoid… Those test results will lead to the solution.
On a Chevy… your starter solenoid is located on the starter itself… Sometimes those have the same type of solenoid failures as outlined above… and sometimes the starter body itself can be misaligned in its mounting hole… When this happens the starter gear hits the flywheel at a bad angle and the flywheel essentially prevents or stops the gear from being able to interface with the flywheel and also preventing the solenoid from powering the starter motor at the same time… The solenoid is not strong enough to overcome such misalignment and you would need to intervene by adjusting the starter in its mount hole.
Methinks your problem lies somewhere in these scenarios.
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thank you so much for the feedback. the truck is a 2001 chevy silverado 1500
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Getting closer, what engine ?
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I saw it was a Chevy a little late… I edited my post… May want to read again… LOL
the truck is a 5.3l v8
i swear mounted it in exactly how it should be. it’s located next to the passenger tire. there’s an 8mm nut that holds a wire onto the starter and then a 13mm nut that holds the starter onto a metal plate that you get to from just turning the wheel and then two long 13mm bolts which hold the starter into place that you get to from under the truck. i don’t really see how i could have mounted it in a wrong way
I understand that completely… Granted the mounting issue is more rare these days…but back in the day there was wiggle room that would cause the condition I described.
Can you bridge the two large terminals on the starter solenoid with a large screwdriver or piece of metal or heavy wire? This is to bypass the starter solenoid itself… if you can trigger the starter this way. You have a faulty solenoid…
You can also unbolt the starter… ground the starter body to the vehicle with a jumper cable… and test fire the starter with the key… if it functions… then the gear is not able to interface with the flywheel…
Those are the things you can try…
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thank you so much for all your help i really appreciate it !
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Also… dont rule out the fact that some bone head could have put the wrong starter in the right box… This can also cause that starter gear not to be able to interface and allow the starter to function. It would act like a bad solenoid… or a misaligned starter in this instance.
Trust me it happens more than I’d like to recount.
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but it ran for about 3 days before it didn’t
I see… I must have missed that… I always miss something when reading posts.
OK thats good that it worked so you can easily rule out that possibility.
Where are you at with this now?
i haven’t tried anything yet. later i will test the starter to see if it’s getting power
Do you have 2 batteries in your truck, a guy I know replaced one, the second battery ended up exploding as it was so dead, and his starting problems were solved.
i’m not sure i will have to check
So i decided to start from zero and go through the obvious things. i Started pulling fuses and i pulled this 50 amp and noticed it was blown and what do you know it was the ignition fuse. i am honestly blown away by my stupidity. But i would still like to know what blew it
Double check all the connections on the new parts installed, it sounds like one is not connected right or a wire was hot and grounded out during the install.
A faulty starter could conceivably blow the ignition system fuse. I wonder why you even heard a “click” when you tried to crank it, with that fuse blown. Does it crank and start ok now? If so, that’s the objective. Hopefully you are good to go.
For no cranks the first thing I do is measure the battery voltage. If that tests out ok next I clean the battery posts and connectors. If it still won’t crank I measure the voltage at both starter terminals, probing terminal to case, with the key in start. If both measure 10.5 volt or more and it doesn’t crank the engine I replace the starter. If either measures below 10.5 volts I work from the starter towards the battery to figure out why.
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What blew it could have been many things… grounding the heavy main lead to the starter, a bad or shorted out armature in the starter motor etc… Well at least the circuit was protected and the fuse did its job and sacrificed itself to save the day. We all miss common things sometimes…happens a lot, no harm done when you catch it later.
Good job sticking with it and sorting it out.