starter woes

1087 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by greenhj, Jun 21, 2009

greenhj

Discussion Starter · Jun 20, 2009 (Edited)

I searched "starter" and read through 8 pages but my particular issue doesnt seem to be covered.

Anyway..

The high torque starter on my v8 cranks very slowly, symptom exactly like a flat battery.

Starter works fine usually, but wouldnt even crank hard enough to start the engine today...

Battery is fully charged, both pos and neg cable are bolted to the starter to avoid bad earths.

Same engine, same starter. (starter probably 3 or 4 years old, engine 18mths, probably only started a couple of times a week)

Nothing has been changed from the usual (working) setup.

I removed the starter and jumped it on the ground using the existing battery and the damn thing nearly took off across the floor!

My question is this, is it possible for a starter to work fine under NO load, then struggle to turn the engine under load.

Any way i can test this "on the bench"?

Thanks!

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cobalt327

· #2 · Jun 20, 2009

Year, make and model?

Could be solenoid related, but in any event it sounds like an electrical delivery problem. By chance, do you have those "bolt-on replacement" battery cable ends? They are ****- plain and simple. Can look and "feel" perfect- tight and clean- but not deliver enough current to heat up a cigarette lighter.

An electric motor (starter included) can "motor" w/o a load, yet still be faulty. The easiest way to check it these days, is to just take it down to your local parts store and hope the guy on duty knows how to operate the test equipment and can find the correct jumpers to hook it up with.

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fast68

· #3 · Jun 21, 2009

yeah there must be resistance in a cable or connection, or battery is bad

check these

also make sure your ground is good to your engine

you must have a good solid ground from battery to the engine block as well for the starter to work right

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greenhj

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jun 21, 2009

ok, found the problem...

Just to clarify, with the battery in the boot rather than bolt the ground to the chassis i ran the ground cable from the battery to the starter mounting bolt to ensure a good current path.

Turns out the battery is bad, the multimeter shows 12.5 volts and there is less than 0.05v drop at the starter terminals with a total 11' of wiring between the battery and starter.

When cranking, the voltage available to the starter terminals is between 4 and 5 volts, needless to say things dont quite run like they should at that voltage

I double tested by hooking jumper cables between the battery leads and the battery in another car, and without starting the donor car the voltage at the terminals of the starter was 8.5v cranking with nearly 18' of wiring but the donor battery is old, and much smaller than the one in the car thats playing up.

So it looks like a new battery is the key to this issue, thanks for the input...

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