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What are some good ideas for a practical and affordable starter home?

Weird starter problems?

  • The starter cable on my '84 full size bronco was smoking and sparking at the solenoid, so I recently took the starter out and had it tested at the auto store, where it spun and passed their test. I bring it home, then bolt it back up to the bronco and hook jumper cables up to it along with a battery from a car that I know starts just fine... Nothing, no spinning, sparking, or smoking. So I take the starter back out and set it on the ground where I hook it up to the battery with one negative jumper clamp on the negative post of the battery and the other negative clamp on the starter housing. Then one positive clamp to the positive terminal on the starter (solenoid is on the firewall, not starter body) and when I touched the other positive end to the battery... nothing. So I take the starter to a different auto shop with a different machine and the starter spins and passes again. I bring the starter home one more time and connect it to the battery with the jumper cables the same as before and this time the starter gear doesn't shoot out on the shaft but it does spin ever so slowly, but in no way shape or form anywhere near enough to start a car. The guys at the auto store say this method should work, and are just as perplexed as I am that the starter will work for them but not me. Any ideas?

  • Answer:

    I doubt you'll get enough power to the starter by using that method. Ford starters pull over 100 amps to turn, that's part of the reason they use an external solenoid. Your starter may have partially burned coils or a bad pull-in contact, enough so that it spins in a test but won't crank an engine. Also, I'd be very suspicious of your connections if you saw smoking and sparking, that usually means a bad cable. ...

Paul at Yahoo! Answers Visit the source

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I've seen cheap jumper cables that wouldn't jump start an electronic watch. Clip the cables on the battery and tap the ends together, if it doesn't go SNAP and throw sparks about 1 foot the cables are junk, or the battery is shot. Poor battery connections will smoke the cables to the starter. Clean and tighten the ends of all cables, at the battery, solenoid, starter and ground.

Del Mer

The starter solenoid on the firewall is bad. Had an '89 full size Bronco with 5.0 engine in the fleet that had an intermittent "no start" problem, replaced solenoid, problem solved.

Don't know everything !

I have had old fords , good fords, bad fords, I traded a beautiful mustang to some arkabama chicken phocker for a BEAUTIFUL RED 93 FORD PICKUP. things started going sideways when I found He thought routine maintenance was to rip the center out of the air filter for his fuel injection and then stuff it back in the housing dirty . (and that was only the beginning) I could not believe the stuff this dummy did to this poor truck. I changed the oil, which looked like TAR. While driving home looked in the mirror and was shocked then horrified to see three quarters of a long city street completely covered in blue smoke pouring from the twin straight tailpipes obscuring traffic for half a block or more and it was MY TRUCK! while I was killing mosquitoes right and left, ON the way down the road I heard this giant BANG, but I couldn't see (too much smoke) truck shook, but kept running, so did I , and hauled butt,. I get home and find out dummy did not lock the tailgate right last time he shut it and of course it fell off on the freeway. THANKS HILLBILLY.He let his girlfriend paint the bumper PEACH for gods sake, which changed to silver when I got it, And there was this big dinner sized dent on the drivers side fender, I noticed next to that was a BULGE ? IN THE FENDER, so I hit that and the dent popped out perfect and no bulge (weird, really weird, like free body work? anyway that truck was a 93 and had that stupid ford solenoid right on the inner fender on the drivers side And it bit me in the butt the day I was trying to sell it it screwed up.That guy must have really wanted that truck, I barely got the new solenoid in, and he showed up, It started up fine and he bought it and drove off. Replace that stupid solenoid, it costs about 10 bucks simplifies life. This is one of many reasons I went to GM because despite gm good or bad, at least if a 10 dollar part screws up, a GM will run until you can get it fixed. But nooo NOT A DAMN FORD.

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