Jeep TJ Starter clicks, Battery is good, starter is new?

good morning youtube's gus got off how you doing today well i'm in the garage getting my butt kicked this isn't good jeep's dead come along let's see what we're doing [Music] bird [Music] all right we're in the garage this project has been going for a couple days i guess a week ago a week and a half ago start started the jeep and it acted like the starter was going bad the it would crank and then the solenoid would disengage so i stop go to restart it solenoid wouldn't engage on the starter stop and start right up or sometimes it would try to start trying to start and then the solenoid would disengage and then i'd go to restart it and start fine and then most of the time it just started normally so i'm not sure i was going well starter must be going out i haven't changed it when i changed the motor so i'm just kind of waiting for it to go well it went yesterday got home started up at work no issues drove home parked in the driveway was working in the house a couple hours later went to leave and it was dead and all it would do is click now on a dead battery every dead battery i've had when it clicks it goes click click click click click click click click click that's not the click i'm getting and when i've done youtube searches on what's wrong or ideas to be what's wrong they're all talking about that rapid click it doesn't work and it's a dead battery and again that's not what the issue is so let me jump in real quick and let you hear what i'm hearing all right so as you heard it's just click click click click click not the rapid click dead battery so took the starter out took it in put a new brought home a new starter put the new starter in same problem in fact the sound you're hearing is with the new starter in and that didn't make sense to me so i checked the battery battery's got over 12 volts check the battery voltage at the starter over 12 volts they matched tells me i got that good continuity between the starter and the battery put the volt meter on and crank the engine and that's still over 12 volts which tells me my cold cranking amps is still good on the battery and it is a new battery the battery's less than a year old turns a year old this month and it's an optima red top i'm confident the battery is good based on no drop in voltage when you're cranking it but i am taking it out today and i have it ruled out but i'm confident that's good so what i've done so far and where i'm at is there's three things that could be wrong that i can think of ignition ground or um positive wire it's a connection issue somewhere something's not right i took the small wire off the starter and the starter is a two wire starter and i jump from the large terminal which has 12 volts to the small terminal which is the ignition so with that wire unhooked i've completely bypassed all of the ignition the ignition switch which is a common issue which is what most of the youtube videos say is your issue that's taken out of the loop anything from that wire up into the wire looms is taken out of the loop if the issue was with the ignition switch ignition wiring somewhere in there when i jump from the pod large terminal to the small terminal the starter would have cranked and started and it didn't i got the same clicking i'm getting now so that rules out the ignition so i took a large jumper cables actual jumper cables and took and went from the positive on the battery down underneath the jeep and hooked that large terminal on the starter reconnected the ignition exciter wire and cranked it guess what same clicking i'm getting a gun so what that rules out is a bad wire between the battery and the starter because i now have two wires going there i should have more than enough to get there and i don't so i go to the last option which is checking ground i hook negative on the battery to a good ground on the block which i use the alternator bolt and the alternator bracket and the starter is grounded out to the block i check continuity between the battery and the block and i do have continuity so i know i've got a good circuit there same issue it just clicks so i don't know what's going on took the starter out of the engine set it on the exhaust so it was grounded on a piece of metal and if the engine were locked up that could be part of the pro that could be the issue but it's still even with the starter sitting on the exhaust not hooked to the flywheel not connected in any way to the flywheel just sitting loose it's the same click which tells me okay i got a bad starter run it back to the auto parts store have them bench test it it bench test fine there's nothing wrong with the new starter they didn't have another one there to check against but they did have my old core and i had them test that and that actually tested as bad solenoid was out so initially the solenoid and starter on my jeep was bad i diagnosed that right i was right on track i just don't know why the new starter isn't firing or isn't engaging it sounds like and when you're underneath the jeep right at the starter it's really loud it's obviously the clicking is coming from there or the ticking or whatever you want to call that it's coming from the starter but i don't know why it's not catching or hitting the fly it's hitting the flywheel or something's hitting i don't know so that's where i'm at that's what the diagnosis so far got a feeling this is gonna be a long video um i've talked to matt about this i've talked to a buddy brad brad's convinced it's a connection issue and he's helped me with a lot of the troubleshooting getting where i'm at i've talked to matt he's also helped me get to where i'm at with the troubleshooting he's more concerned that maybe there's a pinched wire from the engine swap but the issue with that is again i've bypassed the positive wire from the battery and i bypassed the entire ignition wire harness to in the troubleshooting so if that were the issue it would have started by now the engine does start i can pull it behind the pickup and bump start it and it'll start and run fine runs normally it just the starter will not engage so i've got both of them stumped too we're all kind of going scratching our heads at this one but matt's also thinking it's a bad battery i'm not so sure on that but we are going to pull the battery and we are going to take it in and have it bench tested just in case maybe there is a bad cell in that i don't know but that's where we're at this one when i put the motor in if you watch that series i cleaned all the wires cleaned all the terminals re-loomed all the wires checked all the wires so i'm confident all my wiring is good i just broke the positive and negatives off of the optoma just to rule maybe a bad connection on that ground but again i'm confident that it's good these are just extras i put on the top of the battery since it had post and side mounts i use these for the winch and all other connections make sure you let people know about that when they're working on it because i've had people unhook my battery and not realize it had side posts so young i've just unhooked the ground re-hooked up the ground everything's been checked i just want to do one more check on it seriously seriously well what i have unhooked and re-hooked up here the positive side terminal last night the it's me the negative side terminal last night and the negative top terminal which would be the winch the ground for an accessory inside i believe it's the radio the ham radio and then i just now unhooked the positive which would be the ham radio accessory two accessory fuse panels and the winch and then the side terminal so and it started so i'm going to take the side terminal off the battery again because that's not as pretty as i want that connection looks good that's a little dirty so i'm going to wire brush that real quick positive terminals cleaned put back on i'm going to take the negative off that's clean we're just going to hit this real quick just for to be thorough okay terminals are on everything's cleaned make sure it starts all right now let's take this one step further was it a bad connection on the battery which would have been the positive to the starter which again i had that bypass so i don't know why that would have mattered it should have narrowed down by jumping it i digress or if something else shorted out because i had other things hooked to the battery maybe that would shorten things out so do the ham radio last it's the smallest again these terminals are good and clean that's positive that's negative nice and tight i haven't hooked anything up yet just the terminal guard so let's start with the big wire which would be my starter or my winch cleaning up the negative okay let's see if it starts all right so we've ruled out the problem being the winch next thing we're going to do is one of my fuse panels see what happens alright so we rolled out that fuse panel next thing we're hooked up is the front fuse panel let's see if this starts yeah okay so we ruled that out it's not the second fuse panel last thing to hook up is the ham radio so everything's good and tight let's see what happens we figured out wasn't any of that it must have just been a bad connection on the positive going to the battery why i couldn't go from the battery positive down to the starter and have it start is beyond me i don't know but maybe it's i was using the chief of the cheap jumper cables maybe that wire isn't as good as it should be don't know well it wasn't as big as a project as i thought it would be it was and is a connection issue so as always remember you fix the jeep the jeep fixes you have a blessed day

Channel: The Dunnage Garage

Views: 11,707

Keywords: Jeep, Wrangler, TJ, starter, no start, battery

Id: tJnvXYYgyUY

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021