Starter Solenoid Fuse Blows

Hawk03

Hawk03

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I have a new TCY starter purchased from Amazon and a new remanufactured starter from O'Reilly's. Both will run the starter motor but will blow the starter solenoid fuse (30 amp under the hood). The fuse was not blowing before I replaced the starter. I hooked up one of the starters to the battery to see if the solenoid will pop out and it does. You can hear the starter motor turn but there is no cranking.

Any ideas of where to start checking things out?
 
It sounds like the solenoid WIRE is bad or shorted.Are you sure you didn't ground it when you reinstalled the starter? don-ohio
 
I had the starter tested and it worked as it should. I think its shorting out but I don't know how since it didn't do this with the old one. I unhooked the ground on the battery before installation so there was no power to anything during the install.
 
Well,I'm talking about the smaller wire connection or the wire itself.Can you check that it isn't grounded? It only gets voltage when you hit the switch,and that's when the fuse blows,right?
Maybe JoeGr or someone will have a little history to draw on here.
Myself,I'd be looking at the solenoid wire connections and the wire itself.Unhook the small solenoid wire from the starter and hook it to a voltmeter and ground the black voltmeter clip.Does it give 12-14 volts without blowing that fuse? don-ohio
 
Here's another thing I'm wondering about......why did you replace the starter in the first place? Could the other starter have been okay? That would lead us in a different direction. don-ohio :)^)
 
Another way of checking for a short in the wiring is to replace the fuse, unhook the battery (both negative and positive), and go back to the starter location. Using a volt meter on the continuity setting, hook up the negative probe to the chassis (ground) and use your positive probe to probe the positive wires (positive cable and switch wire.) If your meter reads continuity on any of the wires (other than the ground cable (if any is present at the starter)), then you definitely have a "short" to ground in your wiring harness.

Option B would to be to put a volt meter (on the amps setting) in series with your new starter. Apply battery voltage to the starter, short the signal (key sense) terminal to it's respective polarity (i'm unsure if it's positive or negative), and take a reading of the amount of amps passing through the meter. If your starter is drawing more than 30 amps then there is your problem and perhaps your wiring is perfectly fine. If this is the scenario, I would just return the starter as the stock wiring isn't manufactured to sustain anything above 30A.
 
Thanks for the ideas. I think I figured it out. There is a tab sticking out from the connector which I think was touching the ground stud on solenoid. On the TCY starter the solenoid stud is on the top side of the solenoid so I couldn't see it but on the one from O'Reily's the stud is on the bottom side so it was easier to see that nothing was touching. Not sure what I did the first time I installed it.

I was able to improve my remove and replace time on the starter to under 15 mins. :D
 
fudge12 said:
Option B would to be to put a volt meter (on the amps setting) in series with your new starter. Apply battery voltage to the starter, short the signal (key sense) terminal to it's respective polarity (i'm unsure if it's positive or negative), and take a reading of the amount of amps passing through the meter. If your starter is drawing more than 30 amps then there is your problem and perhaps your wiring is perfectly fine. If this is the scenario, I would just return the starter as the stock wiring isn't manufactured to sustain anything above 30A.
Click to expand...

You'd need a pretty tough ammeter to survive that. A clamp-on ammeter would be better for this.
 
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