So... I go to a party last night right. I pull my truck up to their garage door and shut her off. Like 4 min after being there, they tell me that I have move my truck away from the door so someone who lived there could park their car in the garage. I was like eh... ok. I go out, turn the key 2 clicks and hear the fuel pump kick on, lights on dash come on. Turn the key the next click andsome lights on the dash sort of dissapear which is normal when you start. Problem was... there was no crank. This happened to me almost a year ago in another friends driveway. Luckly I was only a few minutes away and asked for someone to give me a ride home to grab my jump pack since ironically no one at his party had jumper cables. Come back, try to start her, light come on... still no crank. I pop'd that jump pack on and turned the key. She fired right up like there was never anything wrong. She has run on the same battery since last time fora solid year w/o any problems again. Back to last night for a minute. One of my other buddies with a little ole ford ranger gave me a jump in the driveway. Tried to start her right away like with the jump pack. no dice. let it sit for about 3-4 minutes, turned the key and still nothing. I was starting to get pissed! Gave her another turn of the keyand fired right up again like nothing was wrong the whole time. I left the party after I got her running and ran down to get some gas lol... i was on "E" the gas station was less than a mile away and I sware I was running on fumes. Drop'd 20 bux in her and she fired right back up at the gas pumps. drove back down the road to her house and parked in her driveway. When we all left this morn, she fired right back up again and drove home. What doesnt make sense is, I probably drove 40 miles throughout the mornbefore I even went to the party. There is no reason why she should have done that. So my guess is the PCM detects the voltage and wont let the engine crank below a certain voltage to protect the engine. Thats all fine and dandy.. but what is going wrong here? She still has the original battery, but the green indicator light is still glowing. Did a load test on her earlier and the battery still tested good as well as the alternator (if we did the test right lol..) and... the terminals are as clean as factory. I mean I can go buy a new battery, but if that ain't the problem, then I wont. Any suggestions? Is there a sensor that tells the alt to charge the batt or not?

Thanks in advance,
pcfixerpro

 

I would clean your battery connections.

 

There might be a Dead spot in the starter, Beat on the starter with a hammer the next time that happens and if it starts after beating on it, replace your starter

 

yeah id think the starter, get under the truck and look at the connections goin into the starter. mine were extremely corroded rusted when i changed it out.

 

And when your under there spray some of that corrosion resistant stuff on the connections, to keep it from haunting you later

 

bad batteries sometimes fake you out. they might randomly generate enough power to crank, but they're still bad. I blame a battery that is about the three years old or older. also, temperature below freezing sometimes kills battery power.

starters go out overa long period of time. they were about $76 a year or two ago, when I changed mine. test battery first, then test starter. go for easy first, but test before you buy something you don't need.

 

My battery failed without warning. It started fine in the morning but failed within a 45 min drive. Sometimes they fail without warning if they short internally. It wouldn't even boost. The Costco replacement has been fine for 3 Canadian winters so far.

 

Well she ran great all day yesterday after that little incident and did some 4wheeling which was fun for a bit... till the powersteering went out. Trying to work my way out of being stuck, and all of a sudden... bzzz that goes high pitched... sounded like a belt shreading and then you couldnt hear it any more. I was so friggin pissed! I hoped it was the serpentine belt cuz i have my old one sitting in my basement still.. but no luck. So after I got pulled out by my friend, we checked under our trucks and I figured mine was alright. Nothing was binding, shifted fine, I drove .5 mile to my buddy's house and it rolled fine too, so we both drove like 10 min down the road to one of those high pressure car washes. Cleaned most of the dirt off. Built up my arm muscles without that powersteering... just kidding. We got back to his house and parked her. Mind you she started fine this whole time. Decided to drive out somewhere later and she fired up again even after I washed her. Got back and went back in his house. Came out around 12:30 at night.. and she pulls the same thing as the night before. Wont fire up. We tried to jump it in the driveway (my 01 1500, his 01 2500) since it worked the 2 other times by coincidence. Didn't work, so we pulled out the battery charger / booster deal thing and cranked her up for 12v boost. Nope, she gave up on me. I should have put it together right there that the battery wasn't the issue. Around 1ish, my buddy drove me home and drop'd me off. he's like... go grab another battery. Pull the die hard out of the old mustang which has 100 more cold cranking amps than our stock batterys. I just bought her around six months ago and figured if it was the battery, this would fix it. He brings me back to his house and swap her in. Nope, still dead. That stock batt needs replaced but I ain't got the money for that any time soon. So... what a way to spend that christmas money. Need that powersteering pump, and a starter. Hopefully ill get around to doing that on wednesday.

 

I think starter connections. Especially if you mud it like you said. I've had two people sell me really cheap cars because they had intermittent starting problems andall Ihad to do was just clean up the connections. Disconnect them, wire brush or sand 'til shiny, reconnect. Start with the free easy stuff first, man.

 

Thanks guys for your help. The other day was the first time she's ever been real off road. I bought it off my dad and he took decent care of it. Just a shame she's getting around that mileage where things start going wrong. The truck isn't corroded underneath. The starter is definately the prob, I just hope the powersteering pump solves the other problem. I'll keep ya posted tomarrow night on how things go.

Thanks again,
pcfixerpro