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2001 Ford Escort ZX2, I just finished a transmission swap on the car. Once everything was put back together on the car, when trying to start it, the starter will only click once. The starter does try to turn over between 20-30 clicks. The voltage across the battery was 12.68V. When the battery was load tested it would bounce between 4.9V and 6.8V. I replaced the battery today, and tried to start it. The starter again clicked once, so I tried to start it several times, the starter tried to turn over, and then the wiring harness caught fire (battery to starter) the positive and negative burned, and the negative actually burned completely through. Any Ideas what’s going on here before I go waste anymore money. I just haven’t experienced this before.
All the connections were clean, and cleaned. Ground wire was never removed from the chassis. It is a manual transmission. The manifold was never removed.
Also before the battery was replaced, the car did run when I pop started it by dumping the clutch while it was moving and in first gear. Started right up and ran until I shut it off, even drove fine.
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You know, I think at this point, unless you’re looking for a science experiment, I’d go back to the AutoZone and tell them to replace the starter. Tell them their own bench test proved it’s defective. Course, you could see if smacking the solenoid or the starter case with a ball pein hammer gets it to operate, but even if it does, it means you’ve still got a bad starter I’d get them also replace the cabling that fried because of it and any other damage you spot. Glad it apparently didn’t toast anything else.
Sparks[quote=”MangrumD” post=61762]Its a starter/solenoid unit, solenoid its attached to the starter with two hex screws. I will pull the starter in the morning, and do those checks.[/quote]
Mark your flywheel and turn motor by hand.
Does mark move?Problem SOLVED! On the solenoid attached to the starter there are three terminal posts. There was a negative ground wire that goes from the battery to the chassis, then from the chassis down to where the starter is that I was hooking up to the starter on the terminal post for the starter motor. I simply removed this wire from the starter, and left it hang there bolted everything back up, and tried to start it, and she fired right up on the first go. Lesson to be learned is that the starter motor on these car should only have two wires going to them. If you have that third wire on the starter then it will just click, and in my case catch the wiring harness on fire. I am assuming that the negative ground wire I removed must have another ground to the chassis somewhere out of visual sight. I am going to see if I can find another ground I overlooked, and if I cannot find one I am going to simply eliminate this wire altogether.
Sounds like this 3rd wire is the ground wire for motor.
Maybe this ground wire was attacks to bolt that holds starter to motor.
If you remove this 3rd wire, and motor not property grounded, you will have other electrical issuses.
Good find.Just wanted to update, I could not find anywhere to ground this wire on the chassis. It does have to be the ground for the motor wire. I did go through everything on the electrical to make sure it works. Lights, wipers, I mean everything checks out. If something happens though I will be sure to update, but as of now everything is great. I would like to personally thank everyone who has helped me, Thank you.
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