So its the middle of the week and my girlfriend and I havent seen each other in 5 days. I decided to go to her house after work to say hi and what not. I get cleaned up, wash and wax the fifth avenue, get her all spiffy lookin. After all of this, I hop in and go to start her, but the starter cranks the engine twice at the most and spins freely. I try again, but the same thing. I tried for fifteen minutes to get her to start. I thought "selenoid", but have no way of testing this without taking the starter out, seeing as how its on the starter . So I call my girlfriend up and tell her that its gonna be a bit. "you have like ten other cars. use one of them" she says with an attitude. "I cant. my car broke down in the front of the driveway where i parked it to wash it. Its blocking all of the other cars except for the R.V. which my dad just got back from the tire shop getting new tires. And Im NOT drivng that to your house" (its like 60 miles) So I walk to the local autozone with my starter where i get it tested. its good, but only working at 80 percent. So i tell the worker whats going on and he is clueless. "Selenoid?" "Its on the starter" So just for the hell of it, i bought a new starter, just in case that was it. NOPE. still does the same thing. crank a couple of times, then spin freely. Then i thought "Flywheel" so i took the tranny off of the engine and mounts and disconnected the drive shaft and slid it back a little ways. inspected the flywheel, and its not warped or missing teeth. Hey i got a little cash left, ill get a new flywheel just to be on the safe side. If thats not the problem, hey, its new aint it?. slapped every thing together, and still does the crank and then spins freely. Is there any other possibilities i need to look at? heres whats new or done to my 1987 Fifth Avunue:

New starter & selenoid
New battery wires
New flywheel
All fuses are good
All wires that I can see are intact

What am i missing? are there any other selenoids i need to replace? Any other relays or anything? Man its frustrating.[:@] I did all this in 4 hours (dayum) and its still not working properly.[:@]

Sorry about the uber long post, but i needed to vent. (and i STILL havent seen my girlfriend) Thanks for understanding and replying

 

When you say,"spin freely" do you mean that just the starter is spinning freely or is it spinning the engine over freely?

 

Just the starter is spinning freely. I thought i found the cause of the problem an hour or so ago, but it wasnt the cause. There is a red wire that runs from the + on the battery that was cut but because is so thick, couldnt be twisted so it was just taped. fixed with NEW wire, but still cranks then the starter spins freely. im open to any and ALL suggestions

 

It actually sounds like the new starter is bad as well. It sounds like the bendix is bad in the starter and is not kicking it out into the flywheel. The only other thing that I can think of is that it is too far away and when it kicks out it just barely hits the teeth on the flywheel and then it misses like the flywheels warped ever so slightly. If this is the case it will show signs of it happening on the teeth. Most likely though, it's just a bad rebuilt/new starter, I've got them before myself.

 

as well as ......broken timing chain? does the engine turn overr faster than normal?

 

I had the same situation happen to me on a 91 ford....and auto zone checked the starter and solenoid .....check the battery for amps....there might be enough power to spin the solenoid gear but not enough power to allow it to engage against the flywheel...thats what happened to me ........it was indeed baffling...........but it was the problem.....sounds just like my situation....

 

yeah, new starter was bad also.The worker and i tested all of the other starters for this car and found 5 other bad units (out of 6). I had the one i finally picked out tested at the store to be good before i left. The car starts with a 1 and 1/4 crank. niiiiice. Thanks for the tips I would have never guessed that there could be a chance that a new starter would be bad. I would think that they are tested before they leave the company but i guess not.

 

Yes it's sad. If you check out the starter or the box it came in, you will probably see that it was a remanufactured/rebuilt starter that was done in Mexico.[sm=smiley13.gif]