Starter issues again? Need your opinion.

[Alex7772011]

So i had my starter go bad about 6 month ago, i bought a starter from orileys with life time warranty and about a week later car wouldnt start again so i took the starter off and exchanged it worked perfect until about 3 days ago, its acting up starts rights up if my car sits overnights, turn it off nothing happens at all no crank no nothing you have to keep turning the key on and of until eventually it will kick in. Sometimes i would just wait about 30 minutes come back and try to start it and it will start. I have new battery in the car shows about 13.6 volts on the meter i thought it was battery cables so i replaced those and they all tight. I crawled under the car and made shure all the wires are tight on the starter and checked that spliced heat shrinked wire is all good. Oh and i can hear the relay click in. so you guys think its the starter again? just wanted to ask before i take it off again because it pain in the ass.
99 Ford Explorer Sport 4.0 SOHC engine
thank you

 

[toypaseo]

...turn it off nothing happens at all no crank no nothing you have to keep turning the key on and of until eventually it will kick in.

My 2¢... this sounds likes the starter bushings might be worn and need replaced. My Paseo had starter issues. Turning the key would just click like the battery was low. Repeated turning of the key would eventually result in a normal crank to start.

 

[96eb96]

I have this problem too. It seems all wires are good. I tested everything with high current headlamps and voltmeters/ammeters.

I had a reman starter in there 10 years and got the click. Installed an advance reman. Worked a few weeks and sometimes I get the click and it will start after another attempt or two. Not convinced the starter is bad. Next thing to replace will be the fender mounted relay. I had those wear out on other cars. Don't know if the 99 has a fender relay but something has to be switching power to the starter solenoid. If that is marginal (oxidation on the contacts) things may click but not start.

 

[koda2000]

When you returned the 1st O'Reilly starter did they check it in their machine or just hand you a new one?

I had a car classic car that did this and it turned out to be a bad wiring somewhere between the ignition key/starter switch and the "S" terminal of the starter solenoid. If you measured the voltage being delivered to the "S" terminal of the solenoid you'd see only 5-6 volts, when the battery was showing 13+ volts. I chased this problem for almost 15 years and finally installed an intermittent switch from the battery to the "S" terminal with all new wiring. Not the ideal solution (as it bypassed the neutral safety switch) but it got around the problem.

You either have gotten 2 bad starter motors (seems unlikely) or something is flaky between the ignition switch/starter relay, solenoid(s) and starter motor. As you're battery is good and you've replaced the battery cables already they should not be the issue.

 

[deadernie]

Had a no start issue with mine and everything with a VOM checked out ok the starter still wouldn't work. I resigned myself to guessing the starter was no good and installed a new one and still wouldn't start.

Visually everything looked good. Cut the heat shrink away from the hot connector wire at the starter and it was hiding some pretty significant corrosion. So much in fact that some wiggling around separated what was left of the connector from the wire.

Bought a new terminal cut the wire back a little bit to get to clean wire, tinned it with some solder crimped the new connector on and finished the solder job and all was well.

The only down side was the crimping tool that was beefy enough to crimp the connector was expensive.

 

[imp]

The fender-mounted starter solenoid was actually a throw-back from the days when it actually fed starter motor current to the motor itself. When Ford put the big contacts which turn the motor on and off inside the starter-mounted solenoid on top of it, the fender mounted sol. became redundant, turning on and off only the relatively small motor solenoid coil current. Then, as things got hairier with more power-gobbling stuff, they had to improve the ignition switch, which was pretty flimsy for many years, and the fender-mount went away.

When EFI was introduced, the inductive "kick" from the fender-mount sol. was often killing the computer, so a diode was placed IN the solenoid can to prevent that. Good thing to know; if you have some older solenoids which have 2 small terminals, instead of only one, don't use one on an EFI vehicle. (The second small terminal bypassed the ignition resistor only when the solenoid was engaged, feeding full B+ voltage to the coil only when cranking). imp