Quote
I think I will install the reman Toyota starter. I just got the click when I went to go start the truck again. Line voltage from the ignition switch was never under 12.0V with over twenty turns of the key. When I hooked up the 4Crawler solenoid test wire I made, I got 5.2V with each solenoid click. I unplugged all of it, took a small jumper wire and breifly connected the + post of the starter and the solenoid terminal and it fired right off. I think the solenoid must be intermittently shorting...


Your test precisely describes a high resistance issue in the wiring to the solenoid. Why?

1. Measured 5.2 volts under load. Something is causing a ~7 volt drop in the factory wiring.

2. Direct connect solenoid to 12 volts and it fires right up. This means you bypassed the factory wiring and it worked fine.

Put 1 and 2 together and that says w/ factory wiring = problem, bypass factory wiring = works.

Solenoid is not shorting out, if it did you would have lots of smoke and more problems. Realize the solenoid does pull about 20 amps (and yes I have measured that) and that is a fair bit of current. Using V = I * R, with I = 20 amps, for a 7 volt drop you only need to have 7/20 ohms = 0.35 ohms of resistance in the factory wiring to cause a 7 volt drop. 0.35 ohms is not a lot, many ohm meters will not even measure that low.

r.c.brown@ieee.org
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