Starting issues....

[mikey_d05]

Alright, ever since I got home my DD has been hard to start. Well...not hard, but it barely turned over whether 20 minutes or 10 hours had gone by since it was last run. I had disconnected my dual battery setup last week (I raided it for 1/0 cables for the winch on my trail truck) so I chalked it up to a bad battery. I grabbed the battery out of my trail truck and threw it in my DD. Started much better.

...So I figured problem solved...WRONG...I was about to take off to go to a friend's house yesterday and it wouldn't turn over at all. No solenoid clicks, not growls, no nothing. What I found odd was that the voltmeter read normally while this was happening, just as it read when the truck was hard to turn over but still started.

The not-turning over phenomenon has happened twice more, and each time putting a fresh battery in made the truck start. A friend of mine fried my multimeter so I can't tell if the ones coming out are actually dead. I know that one of them was not drained at all because I rotated it back in the next time it wouldn't start (without recharging it) and it fired perfectly.

I won't have time to work on it until next weekend, when I'm gonna gut all the lights and stereo and electrical accessories (I'm gonna sell the truck so I'm stripping most of it beforehand) and pull the starter and have it bench tested....anybody have any other suggestions?

 

[89GMCSuburban]

Check your battery connections......if voltmeter is reading normal, you're not getting a good connection somewhere...

 

[ryan22re]

hook up an ammeter in series to the battery and check for a parasitic drain on the battery. anything more than 65 milliamps will kill a battery overnight, and sounds like you may have a bigger drain than that.

if thats not it, prob just a starter drawing too much current.

ryan

 

[78Suburban]

alternator?

I know this is probably a silly suggestion, but did you drive your truck around any, with the new battery? If that's the case, perhaps your alternator is bad?

Is there something left on or drawing electricity inside of your truck? Maybe a wire that has come loose?

Just some thoughts from the noob,
James

 

[barneybasher1010]

Bad ground????

 

[89GMCSuburban]

True for the bad ground. I had a truck come in with a slow start issue. After browsing around, they had routed the ground cable around the bottom of the frame and then up to a stud on the frame. The ground cable had corroded internally so it was only carring about 3 amps when cranking. Check it with an ohm-meter....and you wouldn't be able to tell if there's a problem. So....

Check your connections...AND your cables.

 

[mikey_d05]

The thing that throws me is it will start normally 5-10 times in between the no crank conditions...I would assume the grounds are good, I have three pieces of 1/0, one to the motor, one to the body, and one to the frame. I'll start checking for corrosion the next time I'm home though. My tools are 15 miles away and I've gotta eat supper with the relatives since they haven't left yet.

I'm lucky dad is letting me borrow the burb to take back to school, I'd be here until midnight or I ran out of parts to throw at it.