The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop truck died suddenly

neighbor's 1980ish suburban, gas engine with probably a 350 V8, just died suddenly while plowing snow. turning key to restart produces nothing, no clicking or anything. only thing that seems to work are headlights and dome light. dash appears dead and heater blower won't run either.

crossing over the solonoid on inside fender producess nothing.

HELP!

cisgww,

To me, crossing over the solenoid means jumping from the big BATT connection lug to the START post on the solenoid.

If you have any lights on the rig..as you mentioned you do, it means the battery is functioning, and tied to this common post on the starter. If this is true, and you mechanically jump from this same BATT connection to the solenoid START post with no activity, that would tell me the solenoid is bad.

This would not cause the the truck just to stop though. Did the truck actually have a snow plow on the front. Is this plow positioned with a small hydraulic electric pump. Is this plow connected to the battery or some major junction block and does the rig only have one battery.

I would tend to tie the plowing in with the loss of electrical...maybe the plow is protected by a large circuit breaker inside the engine compartment, and some of the start function of the truck and on this leg too.

The kicker is your statement about jumping the solenoid. If there is battery power to the starter and you stick your screwdriver across this big post and the small solenoid ( the correct one )post, it will turn over!

Stuart

I wonder if there is enough battery? Maybe it has died down to almost nothing (not charging). If so then you wouldn't get enough to turn over or even click, but maybe enough for dim lights.

Check the batt connection for corrosion. I have had no crank or sound before with minimal power and the connection was just loose or bad.

Those usually have some fusible links located near the starter, one may have burned that powers the inst. panel etc. Brian

here's some more info:
Yes he was plowing at the time. I don't know how the plow pump is wired. It was snowing so darn hard we couldn't inspect it or get under to the starter.

On the the fender mounted solonoid, when I jumped it, or connected the two large battery cables together, the pump motor ran, but not enough to move the plow. turning the key in this configuration produced nothing.

We did try to jump it with another vehicle, but that didn't affect anything. Didn't cause the jumping vehicle to act as if under a load.

The lights didn't dim at anytime we tried to start it either. The battery terminals were a bit loose, but don't appear corroded.

Vehicle has only one battery, and I don't know how pump is wired...but I suspect it may be the culprit. My guess is the he may have been trying to lift the blade when it died. Can't confirm that though.

I would check the bat, cable connection at the starter. Usually they piggyback the cable to the plow & end up with a big stact of cables/wires. Next like Fleetside says a fuseable link may have blown. Sometimes they are on the fender or fire wall at the junktion block. My old plow used to run the bat. down when you used it at night. The alt. couldn,t keep up with the demand.

Sounds like the control for the plow might be wired to one of the TBC(truck body controls) legs in the interior fuse panel.This would account for the dash and heater being dead and if shorted or wired incorrectly, could cause all sorts of problems with the battery.

Very likely it has blown the main super fuse or a fuseable link in the engine compartment.

A quick test would be to jump the starter ignition switch or solinoid, from the main post (big wire) to the ignition post (small ign wire) with the key on it should crank and start.

If this fails you have a defective ignition solinoid or a defective neutral safty switch.

Just my 2 cents worth.Hobert

It sounds to me like a bad/dead battery, or maybe a combination of that and a bad/dead alternator.

Try charging off another vehicle with jumper cables. That should at least give you enough oomph to get it to turn over for testing purposes.

Also, this just occurred to me. If it's an automatic, check to see if it's in park.

Loose cables will act just like you describe. I've had loose cables run for ever, and tight ones not tight enough to work. I like Brendans idea of trying another battery (tightly). If still fails, then the harder evaluation would make sense. Lights not dimming doesn't support this theory, but easy elimination of battery to me is the logical first step.