Electrical Problem: Starter, Engine Dieing, & More

[CapnCrunch53]

Hi all, just spent a couple hours getting my truck home after an unexpected issue. I'm at work now, hoping by the time I get home tonight you guys will have some advice to point me in the right direction. Sorry if this is rambling, but I'm not quite sure what I should be looking for.

Truck is a 1989 GMC C1500, 350 TBI, Getrag 5-speed. Lots of parts have been replaced on it recently (alternator, esc module, egr valve) and according to the previous owner the engine was replaced at some point.

I drove to the bank today and the truck ran perfectly fine. I came back out to it, keyed the ignition, and it wouldn't start; everything was dead. No lights, radio, etc. My first instinct was that a battery terminal was loose; yesterday I had had it disconnected. Unfortunately it was raining really hard so I waited a little bit until it eased up a little. From there I came to discover that if I disconnected and reconnected the battery, the electrical would work; radio, lights, everything, but the moment I would try to key the ignition, I'd hear a single click and everything would go dead again and stay that way until I repeated the process.

I checked the terminals several times; the positive wire connector has a little bit of corrosion on it but it isn't a ton. I took out the battery and brought it to O'reilly's; they tested it and said it was good and had about an 84% charge. They also suggested it could be the starter solenoid, and if it was, it could have fried some other wires.

So my mom and I tried to push start the truck and, on the third attempt, were successful. While backing up it felt for a second like it was going to die, but it didn't. So as I was about to pull out of the lot, I put my right blinker on and the engine and electrical died. We pushed it into a parking spot and as I was about to give up and take my mom's car to work, I decided for the hell of it to disconnect and reconnect the battery and try to start it one more time. This time the starter worked and it started on its own!

So I started driving home, trying to keep it at higher RPMs. When it came time to turn right onto another road, I put my blinker on and it died again. Just before that, I realized the parking brake light was on, even though the brake was not engaged. I'm not 100% sure that that light didn't pop on right as it died though, so that might not be indicative of anything.

This time it wouldn't start on its own again, so with the help of a very nice family, I got it push started one more time and got the ***** home.

So, does anybody have any ideas? It does seem like the starter is bad, however, what could be causing the engine to die (seemingly when I use my right blinker)? Could this be a bad ground somewhere? Some other problem? Any thoughts are appreciated; I could really use a point in the right direction. I've always wanted a Jaguar, I guess my truck is acting like one now...

 

[TylerZ281500]

theres a fusible link on the passenger side firewall under the black box, if those die they can cause all sorts of hell, some fail some literally break apart.

otherwise go under your dash and check your NSS its the white thing on the bottom of your column, jiggle it a little and see if it does it more.

 

[Massey]

IM leaning in for the grounds being bad (ie loose) or your power feed to the Alternator is not tight. Make sure you also eliminate the corrosion on the cables as a little of that goes a long way when it comes to the electrical system. The issue with the right turn signal sounds like a short, a real short as the power goes where it is not supposed to go and draws so many amps that there is no power for any other system. This can cause fires so do be careful, hot wires are a dead giveaway. Check the wiring on the lighting system of the truck too as the problem with the right turn signal may not be under the coulmn but with trailer wiring or in the engine bay. IF the truck has any accident damage near one of the lights also check really good in that area to make sure that there is no bare or pinched wires.

Last thing is the starter solenoid. Could be the problem but they dont usually die shorted, they like to die and simply stop working. Do your self a favor and simply replace the starter with a good Lifetime warranty one. They are usually only $10 more than the 1 yr and the quality of the rebuild is 100X better.

Massey

 

[CapnCrunch53]

theres a fusible link on the passenger side firewall under the black box, if those die they can cause all sorts of hell, some fail some literally break apart.

otherwise go under your dash and check your NSS its the white thing on the bottom of your column, jiggle it a little and see if it does it more.

Thank you very much! I'll start by checking both of those when I get home. Wouldn't have even thought of either of those.

IM leaning in for the grounds being bad (ie loose) or your power feed to the Alternator is not tight. Make sure you also eliminate the corrosion on the cables as a little of that goes a long way when it comes to the electrical system. The issue with the right turn signal sounds like a short, a real short as the power goes where it is not supposed to go and draws so many amps that there is no power for any other system. This can cause fires so do be careful, hot wires are a dead giveaway. Check the wiring on the lighting system of the truck too as the problem with the right turn signal may not be under the coulmn but with trailer wiring or in the engine bay. IF the truck has any accident damage near one of the lights also check really good in that area to make sure that there is no bare or pinched wires.

Last thing is the starter solenoid. Could be the problem but they dont usually die shorted, they like to die and simply stop working. Do your self a favor and simply replace the starter with a good Lifetime warranty one. They are usually only $10 more than the 1 yr and the quality of the rebuild is 100X better.

Massey

Thanks for the advice. I'll check all the grounds I can find. Power to the alternator should be good but I'll check it as well. After two bad ones from O'Reilly's earlier this year, who knows. I was reading ~14V like normal on the way home. Some kind of short does sound very possible... that's going to be fun to troubleshoot if it's the problem. I'll check out the lighting too... looks like I've got lots of things to try, at least I'll be busy tonight!

I'm about to head home; I'll try out all of your suggestions and post back later with my results. Thank you for the replies; you've given me some good info to think about.

 

[CapnCrunch53]

Well, got her all fixed up and running fine again. Turns out it was in fact a grounding issue. A little backstory; when I got the truck, the negative battery terminal bolt was way too long, I'm talking like 3 or 4 inches. It worked, but a couple months ago my dad got me some normal terminal bolts to use because it was a hazard (and looked stupid). Unfortunately I have to give credit to my dad for this: tonight he spotted that the insulator on the negative connection had a washer in it, I guess to help that super long bolt bite better?

Anyways when connecting it yesterday something must have shifted and caused it to get a poor connection, because checking the voltage from the positive terminal to the negative terminal showed it was only getting 0.9V. I took that washer out (and also noted that the battery terminal and the bolt both had a slight black mark where it must have been arcing) and it works great now. Chalk another one up to the previous owner

 

[twomanymontes]

Glad to hear the problem is fixed