Starter wire question

[Schurkey]

I bought me a roll of wire, some butt connectors, and ring terminals.. ran a wire from the fuse box (purple wire) across the firewall, dropped it down and hooked it to the starter with a ring terminal. All good now, I turned it on and off about 10 times last night to just verify...

Agreed. Typical butt connectors and ring terminals are going to corrorde, and take some wire with them.

Doing electrical repairs on a vehicle requires weatherproofing the connection.

Repairing the "purple" wire on my '97 K2500. The wire at the starter had been repaired by a previous owner...

You must be registered for see images attach

...done poorly, and had rotted-out again. The original vehicle wire had corroded back into the wire harness about a foot...

You must be registered for see images attach

...to where I couldn't cut it back far enough to get to clean copper because the harness is routed behind the bellhousing. I had to go all the way on top of the engine to splice-in fresh (red) wire (because I couldn't find purple 12-gauge wire.) The splice was crimped, then soldered, then covered with heat-shrink tubing that has adhesive on the inside for total weather-sealing.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Then the new wire was dropped-down to the starter solenoid.

 

[98tahoe4dr]

Agreed. Typical butt connectors and ring terminals are going to corrorde, and take some wire with them.

Doing electrical repairs on a vehicle requires weatherproofing the connection.

Repairing the "purple" wire on my '97 K2500. The wire at the starter had been repaired by a previous owner...

You must be registered for see images attach

...done poorly, and had rotted-out again. The original vehicle wire had corroded back into the wire harness about a foot...

You must be registered for see images attach

...to where I couldn't cut it back far enough to get to clean copper because the harness is routed behind the bellhousing. I had to go all the way on top of the engine to splice-in fresh (red) wire (because I couldn't find purple 12-gauge wire.) The splice was crimped, then soldered, then covered with heat-shrink tubing that has adhesive on the inside for total weather-sealing.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

Then the new wire was dropped-down to the starter solenoid.

I install car audio in my free time so I heat shrink any and every wire I mess with

 

[Road Trip]

So after all the bs I went thru I bought me a roll of wire, some butt connectors, and ring terminals.. ran a wire from the fuse box (purple wire) across the firewall, dropped it down and hooked it to the starter with a ring terminal. All good now, I turned it on and off about 10 times last night to just verify...

I install car audio in my free time so I heat shrink any and every wire I mess with

Hello 98tahoe4dr,

At first I was having a bit of trouble following your fix, but it sounds to me that you just provided a new short-free wire
between the starter relay (in the Underhood Fuse/Relay Block) and the starter solenoid. And you used heat
shrink on every connection. And it's working once again. Excellent!

For what it's worth to anyone else who's researching a similar problem, I decided
to take a copy of the factory wiring diagram and mark it up in order to show just
how much of the circuit became a "Don't Care" when the OP clearly stated that the
40A fuse didn't blow until the key was turned to the START position:

You must be registered for see images attach

When troubleshooting, sometimes it helps to print out a copy of the wiring diagram and simply
mark up all the areas that you can prove are not part of the problem. This makes it a lot easier to sharpen
your focus on only what's left to prove/disprove in the circuit in question.

1) Note that having a separate CRANK fuse in the I/P fuse block that, thanks to it not blowing, allowed us to
eliminate a whole lot of wiring between the Ignition Switch > NSS > control side of the Starter Relay. Especially
helpful when the wiring in question is under the dash. (!)

2) Given all the details (Ignition Switch replaced, etc) the only 2 remaining paths that could explain the observed
symptoms are:

* Wire between Pin 87 of the Starter Relay and connection 'S' on the starter solenoid. (PPL, Circuit #6)

* Wire between Ignition Switch Start position to input of 10A CRANK fuse in I/P fuse block. (YEL, Circuit #5)

****

I was busy brewing this up for the OP -- meanwhile, he beat me to the punch with the actual fix. :0)

But I've decided to leave this at the end of this thread just in case it might help someone else reason
through this page, and also to help explain my comments in #14 above.

FWIW --

 

[98tahoe4dr]

Hello 98tahoe4dr,

At first I was having a bit of trouble following your fix, but it sounds to me that you just provided a new short-free wire
between the starter relay (in the Underhood Fuse/Relay Block) and the starter solenoid. And you used heat
shrink on every connection. And it's working once again. Excellent!

For what it's worth to anyone else who's researching a similar problem, I decided
to take a copy of the factory wiring diagram and mark it up in order to show just
how much of the circuit became a "Don't Care" when the OP clearly stated that the
40A fuse didn't blow until the key was turned to the START position:

You must be registered for see images attach

When troubleshooting, sometimes it helps to print out a copy of the wiring diagram and simply
mark up all the areas that you can prove are not part of the problem. This makes it a lot easier to
focus on only what's involved in the failure.

1) Note that having a separate CRANK fuse in the I/P fuse block that, thanks to it not blowing, allowed us to
eliminate a whole lot of wiring between the Ignition Switch > NSS > control side of the Starter Relay. Especially
helpful when the wiring in question is under the dash. (!)

2) Given all the details (Ignition Switch replaced, etc) the only 2 paths that could explain the observed
symptoms are:

* Wire between Pin 87 of the Starter Relay and connection 'S' on the starter solenoid. (PPL, Circuit #6)

* Wire between Ignition Switch Start position to input of 10A CRANK fuse in I/P fuse block. (YEL, Circuit #5)

****

I was busy brewing this up for the OP -- meanwhile, he beat me to the punch with the actual fix. :0)

But I've decided to leave this at the end of this thread just in case it might help someone else reason
through this page, and also to help explain my comments in #14 above.

FWIW --

Yes I provided a short free wire from the fuse box. I found it when I read that post about hooking a test light to the positive terminal and touching pin 87. I disconnected the power wire(PPL) from the starter, my test light has the clamp so I clamped my driver side battery + and touched pin 87, the light came on telling me the wire is grounding out somewhere. Then I pulled up the fuse box spliced the purple wire under pin 87 to a fresh wire and ran it across the firewall with zip ties(incase I need to address this issue again in the future), dropped it down to the starter and hooked it up.