Solved I'm back, she won't start again :)

Hello Everyone:

My brother's truck died again, this time it was electrical for sure, when you turn the key all the dash lights would come on, radio, etc.

But the second you try to turn it over it just dies, all lights go out power gone.

All the fuses in the main power box under the hood are good, the only thing I don't know how to test is diode, can those blow?

Any ideas for where I should begin my quest?

The usual suspect would be the ignition switch. Test for power at the starter solenoid with
switch turned to "start".

Hello:

Just to add to information, we also checked all fuses inside the cab as well and they are all good.

Tomorrow we are going to go to the wreckers and see if we can snag a diode just to rule it out.

But, it seems the only power I can get from the solenoid is 2volts sometimes, it definitely isn't 12.

But when I chk the battery posts they are 12.

Update:

We switched out the ignition switch (we believe, it is a grey box that plugs into a wire harness held on by two gold bolts?) and it didn't fix anything.

Although, the ignition no longer works, the key just turns with no resistance at all. I would reckon at this point we have lost the ignition it's self?

Any ideas?

Update again:

We are at a total loss.

We replaced the broken Key Cylinder (Brand new) we replaced the ignition switch with one from the wreckers, didn't help so we bought a brand new one, still doesn't help.

No matter what we do with the ignition the lights on the dash do not come on, nore does the headlights or anything it is totally dead.

Battery has 12V.

Solenoid does not have power with the ignition on or off.

Any ideas where we can go next?

Think we may have discovered an issue, if you leave the car for awhile like a whole night it will have 12V everywhere, you attempt to turn it over and a loud CLUNK happens and power is dead, then your best getting 2V on pos and neg terminal attachments (Battery still 12V)

I think maybe the ground is bad, we are going to take the ground off and sand it down to bare metal and see if that doe sit.

The battery cables are known to corrode inside the insulation, maybe replace them if sanding the attachment point doesn't help.

Seems so obvious after you said that! But we followed every connecter we could find and could not find the issue, so we pealed back a bit of the black casing and the negative terminal was holding on about 5 inches from the battery by one thread, and it snapped the second we touched it. We fixed that spot and she runs again!!! You guys rock thanks so much for pointing me in that direction.

Really? Damnn!! That's great! I was just throwing it out there. I only know that's a common problem from seeing it come up on the forum!

Well it was best guess ever!!!