Hello All,

Newb here. Bought an 86 4WD 22RE Pickup Last Spring and promised myself that I would fix it if I ran into issues.

No problems at all till today, when I hopped in and tried to start it at the gas station. All of my dash lights come on as well as the clock, ac fan, etc. The lights all dim when I fully turn the key, but no clicking or anything, just a faint "whoomp".

Tried Jumping it (nope), Check the Ignition fuse (looked good), tapped the starter with a wrench, inspected battery terminals for corrosion (nice and clean - I honestly don't think the 6 month old battery is the issue here), and occasionally tried to crank for about 30 minutes.

After reading for a while, I have just a few suspicions. I may be wrong, but it seems like the starter isn't getting any juice, or has failed. I have seen a lot of references to the ignition/starter switch going out, as well as issues with contacts on the starter.

I'll be going back out to fiddle with it in a little bit so I would love to hear any thoughts you might have, as well as any potential ways to troubleshoot this further. I may try to jump the starter from the battery in order to get it to fire up and hopefully get the truck home without calling a tow truck.

Thanks in Advance!

 

Bad ground would be my first guess

I have had 3 month old batteries fail $120.00 batteries

Without some voltage readings your just guessing

I am not a big fan of beating on starters Reminds me of the beatings I got as a kid.

How long has the starter been in there??

Starter drives can break

Contacts can wear .

 

if you can reach you could cross the terminals on the starter. if it cranks just turn on your key, make sure it's in neutral (or park on an auto), cross them again and drive home.

 

That Wyoming9, yeah, this is probably a good time for me to go ahead and get a meter.

Yeah akwheeler, i'll most likely be trying this.

Thanks for the replies. I'm gonna get back to it and hopefully figure this out.

 

As it turns out, I went back to look everything over and hopefully get this figured out and it cranked right up. Got it home and, now that I have my tools, will do some additional work to troubleshoot the problem. It is intermittently doing the same thing now but I'll follow up in case it is helpful for other posters stuck in a rando parking lot with this issue.

 

I've had them to this before a couple times on different trucks. Check your cable connections down there at the starter. When it just does it intermittently, the cause is usually the small wire that tells the starter solenoid to close. It's the smallest wire on the starter. That wire on mine had a ring terminal on it that was just hanging by a thread. Cut it off and replaced it and haven't had that issue again. I also went ahead and replaced my main starter to battery leads with some good heavy cable while I was already under there. Just check it with a meter the next time it does it and you'll be able to diagnose it completely. It's an easy circuit to troubleshoot.

 

Just wanted to follow up with an update. Not surprisingly, after a day or two the issue returned (and the truck wouldn't start after countless tries over several days), and I started to get to work checking off some potential causes to my problem.

Hopefully I am not Jinxing myself here, but I did go in and clean some of the ground wires, since I had been doing some work on my AC compressor just before having trouble, thinking that maybe I had goofed around with it too much and caused the ground to not have a good contact where it connects from the battery to the Compressor mount. Sanded down the contact there and Eureka! Its starting every time now.

Thanks Wyoming9 for giving me the cheapest/easiest option to check first. I'll keep my fingers crossed that I wont be stuck anywhere anytime soon, but I am just blown away by all of the helpful info on these forums.

And thanks Charchee, that is exactly what I thought may be the issue. I'll make sure to reference this if I have trouble starting in the future. I plan on driving The Old Battleaxe for many more years and sounds like the starter connections/contacts may be something I have to deal with eventually.

What a feeling to have my truck starting consistently and cold AC blowing here in ungodly hot Georgia. Good times.

 

Just in General

Sad really that people remove some wires to install some part .

Now something electrical is not working most never seem to think now what did I just disconnect being in a hurry and never disconnect the negative battery terminal.

Pay no attention to the minor fireworks or even think what did I just fry or what fuses opened

Only to say my Flux drive no longer boosts to Hyper speed Help!!