nitrous36

Long story short, it started when my harmonic balancer went bad, which failed 2 weeks ago. And the day I replaced that, my starter went bad. When I'd turn the key, the solenoid would go click.............click............ click..............click.................click. It ticked slowly, just like that. The car wouldnt jump start, but the battery is good(its new) and all the accessories(lights, radio, etc) power on with no problem. So I was sure it was the starter.

Yesturday I replaced the starter with a brand new one. It worked fine for the first 2 hours I put it on, then it started doing the same thing. This time though, the starter solenoid fires/clicks rapidly like click click click click click click, unlike the old starter with slow dead clicks. The solenoid clicks rapidly, but the starter motor will not engage, like when you have a low battery. But jumpstarting still doesnt work. Its not the battery, its new and I fully charged it yesturday.

This ****ing beats me. Its ****ing killing me. What else could be causing this????

nitrous36

Update:

I tested the battery. Its confirmed good. Next Ill remove the starter and have it bench tested to rule it out.

Derf00

Check your ground cables and your starter cables. A bad or weak ground would give similar problems. so would a bad connection to the starter in general.

nitrous36

Oh yeah thats the next step. Plan to recheck the starter connection next. The battery connections are good for certain. Question, the only grounds I see are the ones behind the left headlight and the braided ground wire running from the hood to the passenger side firewall. What other grounds should I look for? Tell me anymore you know of.

BabyGT

Grab the negative cable from the battery and follow it back to where it bolts to the body, even if it looks good and tight pull it off, clean the body to bare metal, and bolt everything back down.

petrock

On my wifey’s ’98 3.8L, the negative battery cable goes straight to the starter and the positive cable goes to the fuse box (a fuse and the starter relay) and then straight to the starter. I would think the ’00 3.8L would be similar, but you never know.

Have you checked the starter relay? Try swapping it with the fuel pump relay and see if the problem reproduces. If not, then its a bad relay. You could also try jumping the whole for the starter relay’s pin 30 & pin 87 with the key on, engine off. If it starts up, then the problem is in your ignition system, not the starter. Be careful to make sure you know which whole your jumping. Pick the wrong ones and you could fry the computer or blow a fuse (at best).

Good luck...

nitrous36

Thanks for all the advice guys. Im going to start checking the grounds today.

nitrous36

Ok I found the bad ground last night. Everything should be good. Knock on wood. Turns out there is a ground near the right engine mount, above the the starter. It must have vibrated lose when the motor was shaking from the bad balancer. Car seems to be starting fine now. Thanks for the help guys.