NO CRANK NO START AFTER STARTER REPLACED! Diagnostic Steps To Help Find The Root Cause Of No Crank

everyone roger here from ask car experts i had a subscriber reach out to me last night he has a bmw x3 and he replaced the starter and everything seemed to be okay for a short time and then the vehicle ended up with a no crank no start once again and that's actually pretty common on the x3 and a lot of bmws you can have a bad starter but there's usually another underlying condition or sometimes it's actually cost from something else i'm going to go over some steps and some tips on how to make sure that you're not going to misdiagnose a starter and to check and make sure that this the problem is not actually a starter to begin with i'm also going to show you some quick and easy test steps to help identify that the issue is or is not a starter all right let me get started all right like you would suspect the first thing to check is your battery so i have a just a volt meter and it's set to 20 for dc voltage depending on your volt meter this might be a little bit different but you want to make sure you're on dc and you want to be in the 20 range you might have an auto one and the first thing to stick to check is is your battery good all right so we should see 12 volts here on the volt meter and i'm just going to go from the positive side to the negative and i have 11.79 so i have to charge this battery but that should be enough to crank it over i can also put a jump pack on it and i know for a fact that it the vehicle will not crank all right so my battery has voltage that's step one now you always want to make sure that your cables are tight on both terminals you can even loosen them clean the terminal put them back on and check your ground here at the battery if you have a loose terminal you can have a voltage drop and that's just from it moving around while you're driving and it can create a arcing between the pole and the actual cable and that can actually cause what's called a voltage drop and i can show you that right now so to check for a voltage drop with my volt meter i'm going to actually go from the center of the pole right here on my battery to my actual housing or my connector and i should be able to see i'm trying not to block the camera but basically i'm going to go from the center to the outside and i have 11.4 volts now that means that there's a voltage drop i am losing 11.4 volts between here and here you can check that also on your ground to your body back out so here's my ground to my body if i go from the center here to my ground right i shouldn't see anything that's called a voltage drop test and i should see maybe less than half a volt realistically i'm seeing 11.49 so if you see voltage using a voltmeter here that means that you have a voltage drop so let's take a look why all right pull my negative cable off well that's because i've put electrical tape around the terminal all right and that was for the purpose of the video so if i put that back on i don't even really need to tighten it yet because it takes a while for arcing to occur and a voltage drop to occur so now if i go from my positive to my negative what i got zero that means i have no voltage drop and that means my connection is now good so that's the first thing that you should check now keep in mind some common things it can also be is it could actually be your key because your key sends a signal to at least in the e46 to the ews through the coil ring here to allow the starter to start it sends an enable signal once uh all of the communication verifies that the rolling code in the key matches if you have a manual transmission you'd have to make sure that your clutch switch works and i'm going to assume that those things are good also if you don't have a manual make sure that your cluster shows that you're in park so right now with my foot on the clutch i know that's not the problem because i've set up the bug obviously i can turn my key on everything lights up nice and bright and i get nothing i got no crank no click and that tells me that either my starter is dead which is what most people think or i have some other kind of problem and i know for a fact in this car that there is another problem and it is not the starter but it's often this is an often misdiagnosed situation where people replace the starter let me just go over quick on what you'd need if you wanted to check at the starter on any 46 and other cars it is somewhat difficult to get to the starter but you'd have to do it or you'd have to find a connector to verify that you're getting voltage to the starter solenoid you should have power going to the main large gauge wire to your starter and that is should be battery voltage should be there all the time and then you have a smaller one wire that goes to the solenoid that activates the starter and you should only have voltage there when someone holds the key into the run position and that would release the power to the solenoid and if everything checks out key and dme communicate then it will allow the engine to crank over so we're going to assume that that is good or actually what you should be doing is these other tests first before going and digging into a starter because sometimes you have to take the intake manifold off to get to a starter or in this car you have to drop the exhaust i mean i i could get to it if i take all this apart here you can actually get to it you have to take the throttle boot and the diesel valve off but i know my starter is good so realistically you should start with these steps that i'm going to show you first before going after the starter all right next thing i'm going to check with my voltmeter i'm going to check my power up to my jump terminal here the jump terminal actually is a connection that goes over and this is what connects to your starter so you actually want to make sure that this is good so i'm going to check here there is corrosion this car is an older car but i should see battery voltage or close to it even the ground's kind of corroded let me scrape them on see if i get a good reading so there we go we have it says the negative that's just because i have the positive on the negative side 11.5 so that's basically what i had in my battery so i have good voltage up until this point all right so my car should start right well unfortunately it doesn't start so what are some other things you can check and i have a great easy step that i'll show you shortly on how to check this but let's just see if i go from my positive here and let me move the camera so you can see there we go so i go from positive here to any ground point on the engine that's basically what i'm looking for right and i should see the same voltage and let me put this here let's see if you can see it too can you see that yes and no let's come in a little bit i'll tell you what it says the angle is a little off in the dark garage so all right so i'm gonna go from my positive to a ground and i saw i have seven volts two volts eight volts that's jumping around a little bit so if you see something like that and you're not seeing a good 12 volt signal you've got to say to yourself something doesn't seem right here all right what could that be so now i'm going to do a voltage drop from the negative to the negative so i'm going to go from the ground side so i get entangled here to my ground on my engine and i should see zero volts and i'm getting 2.8 volts so 2.7 still 2.8 all right so i have 2.8 was my highest so i have a voltage drop on my ground side between my battery and my engine and that's a problem so if you have a test light i would use a test light next i like test lights some people don't like to use test lights i think they give you really good information i prefer ones that actually have a bulb inside and not a digital display or an led an led is not going to give you amperage it will tell you you have 11 volts but it will be 11 volts you can't see if it lights the light bright dim or what so amp amperage is really going to help determine what's going on and it can help you diagnose the problem in some instances so i'm going to go to my ground i'm going to go to my battery okay and that's pretty bright so i have good amperage up to here all right and i should expect to see between my ground and my positive that should light okay now if i go from positive to engine ground it should light here right and it does let me show you that [Music] so if i go from my positive side to my ground it should be lit nice and bright or to my engine ground here same thing so let's take a look and i see how with the brightness is there and the brightness is here and i don't know if you can tell but that's actually a little dimmer than right here so again that tells me there's something going on and it's probably not my starter all right so there's another interesting test you can do with the test plate let me show you that next all right so i'm going to go from my ground terminal and on your x3 dave you're going to just go from your your jump terminal on your ground and then take your test light and you might need another person but you're just going to hold it up to any engine ground right so from ground to ground you should see nothing it should not light anything and look i have a little bit of light there why would i have voltage from ground to ground right what would create something like that and the reason is just like on the terminal when i had the electrical tape and i went across those two terminals [Music] and you saw the 12 volts it's the same reason the the path of voltage is actually going through my test light because it's finding the path of least resistance so that means that i have a voltage drop now sometimes you'll see nothing here and the only time you'll actually see a nice bright signal is when you i'm going to try to cheat here all right so i have that connected there so that we can watch this a little bit better and we can watch this light hopefully i can see it from inside the car so what you're going to want to do dave is set up a test light or a volt meter on your body jump terminal ground to a ground on the engine and i'm just using alligator clips and then at the same time you're gonna have somebody step on the brake and try to crank the engine over and i'm going to go hop in the car and do that now and hopefully we can see what happens with that light wow look at that it's getting bright key off key on tr on [Music] so that means i'm getting a lot of amperage when i turn my key that doesn't make sense i'm on the ground side i shouldn't see anything there it should be it should not light at all so what that means is you have a bad engine ground that's really what we're testing for okay now there is a really cool easy trick to do to also test if you have a bad engine ground i do like to do these tests here because this is really the white right way to check but let me show you a quick and easy test on how to check your instagram all right so i picked up these heavy-duty jumper cables from harbor freight and this is the first time i'm using all right so why jumper cables and no i'm not going to be jumping the car that's actually not the purpose i'm going to be using these jumper cables for i'm only going to be using one side meaning either red and red or black and black i'm going to use black and black because you're going to be on the ground side so i'm not going to go and jump my car to another car the same thing as using a jump pack and i know the car is not going to start but what you can use jumper cables for is to create your own ground to prove that your ground is bad all right and i often use this at the same concept at work all right so i'm gonna go to the jump terminal here i'm going to put my jumper cable the ground side on my ground okay make sure i'm on there i think i am all right so again i'm using the black wire so here's my black and the red i'm not going to even use it i don't need it right this is my red don't need it close that i'm going to take my other side and i'm going to find another good metal spot on the engine and i'm going to go ahead and attach to that spot and hopefully that's going to be a good spot right now if i take my test light and go from my ground my ground here you can see i don't have any light right that's what i should see i should see no voltage going through this no nothing going through my test flight all right so that's it that's how i'm going to leave it make sure it's clear in the front nothing's going to get caught and i'm on jump terminal ground with black and i'm on any kind of metal spot on your engine and basically what i'm doing is remember your engine is isolated from the rest of the car except for a ground strap your ground strap is what attaches it to the chassis and that's what creates the full connection same thing if you have a trailer hitch right here's my car here's my trailer hitch and i have the ball socket that the trailer has to attach to if i'm disconnected and hanging on the ground and i have my wires connected nothing's going to light it's not going to work because it uses the ball socket as your ground so when you hook it up to your car it completes the circuit and then all of the lighting works right and that's basically what we're doing here we're creating an additional ground i'm going to hop in the car and we'll see if this cranks over all right well it didn't crank all right so try to get a better connection here on my positive let's lift this up one more time here and go with right so i'm on ground and ground that's my jump terminal ground and then i just have another spot on the chassis from my ground all right i did only have 11 and a half so i threw my jump pack on the battery in the back and i'm really good at what's going on let's see there we go so that is absolutely it that proves that i have a background for my engine all right so that's how you check and you saw i mean the really the best test is to use a test light and to use a volt meter to check if you have a bad ground and then you can use a cable to verify if you have good strong jumper cables you could start with the jumper cables if you don't have good jumper cables and you have like the thin ones sometimes there's not enough of uh if the amperage can't go through that well enough and you can still end up with the same problem and misdiagnose it that's really why you should use a test white or a voltmeter to check between your ground and your ground while somebody cranks it remember you saw how it was a dim light you might not have any light and then when you crank it it should be nice and bright and that's if you're from ground to ground that proves you have an engine ground so let's take a look at the engine ground on this car and see what's going on so i'm under my e46 and this is my main problem right here i took but not off the ground and this is the fix to put this back on now on your x3 dave you are you're going to have a braided metal ground strap and you're going to find it under the car or if you look down on the top i'm trying to remember if it's on the left or right side i want to say it's on the driver's side all the way down and sometimes you can see it from the top and if you grab a hold of that that ground strap and just give it a slight wiggle it's probably going to crumble which is very common it gets corroded and it just falls apart in your hand so that's that's probably the problem on your particular situation where you've replaced the starter and had a secondary failure of a no crank again your ground strap is corroded and that is an often unfortunately misdiagnosed situation even from experienced people so i know to always check for it just because i've even been burned on it a long time ago and it's something that i i always check religiously now check your battery connections and then do all the testing that i showed you in the engine bay to make sure that your ground is good so the fix for you is probably going to be to replace your ground strap on any 46 they have this nice um sheathing over it and everything sealed and these usually don't go bad unless you know the stud rusts out or something like that i had a lot of corrosion here but it wasn't causing a voltage drop before i took it apart so for yours take a look at your ground strap and uh post in the comments let me know if that helped you solve it hopefully it does and thanks for watching hopefully this is going to help some other people out there with same situations now it's very common on the x3 but it's also common on other bmws that use the same style ground strap and i think that's some x5s as well so definitely check your engine ground before you replace your starter all right dave take care and everyone else thanks for watching

Channel: AskTheCarExperts

Views: 1,501

Rating: 4.9047618 out of 5

Keywords: bmw no start, bmw no crank, starter diagnosis, no start, starter problems, voltage drop, starter testing, no crank testing, my car does not start, my car does not crank, bmw not starting, electrical diagnosis, engine problems, no start after replacing starter, no crank after replacing starter

Id: OprcKX2l_Ow

Length: 21min 7sec (1267 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020