Troubleshooting single click on start of 04' v6. No cranking, Replaced starter/batt/relay aleady.

Sounds like you have either corrosion somewhere or damage to the wire.. you can always run a new wire to the starter. It’s not to hard

 

Attempted restart without jumper cable, no good.

There is an issue with the wire for sure.

I'll look at tomorrow.

Now I drive it to a garage to work on it at least, not in my apt. Parking lot. Lol.

 

Good to make some headway, hopefully it’s a simple repair (it’s likely just the power cable going to the starter)

 

I had the same problem too!!! Maybe about couple months after receiving my truck I had someone install a Clifford auto start. Note before had truck started up with ease and never did had an issue. Back to my story, when he was timing how long it should take to start the truck using the auto start, my truck made a really weird winding noise, like the starter was bad. Then he changed it to a lesser time to start it and it worked fine. Since she installed it I always used it (the auto start), but one time I didn’t use it and manually started it it gave me that weird winding sound again! Then I tried again and it just gave me that one click (like my engine was shot!) I was panicking cause I was far from home and I didn’t wanna tow it (side note* i have a voltmeter and my battery seemed normal). I tried my auto start and it worked perfectly.. so now when I’m home I try to start it manually and it hasn’t had a problem. I thought I had a battery problem/starter problem but maybe someone who had an auto start had the same problem? Moral of my story is , did u have some sort of autostart, maybe that could be the Problem?

 

Only thing remotely close to that is the aftermarket cruise control. I'll tinker with that and make sure everything looks good.

Thanks!

 

Best of luck and I hope someone here can help you with ur problem, I’ll follow this cause I feel like I may have the same problem in the future

 

I have the skid plates off and will remove front bumper/grille to trace the lead and look at it closer tomorrow. That should give me more room and light to investigate.

 

Thanks bud.

One thing I have learned in life is to help yourself as much as possible before relying on others. That said, I would be totally screwed without TW because I am an idiot sometimes!

Haha.

 

The voltages seem rather low on the test... I have no way of knowing if that issue is your meter or your battery. If you can take the caps off the battery to get to the electrolyte you can test each cell individually, expect 2.0 ish to 2.25 ish volts per cell. Less than than and you have a bad cell in your battery.

Assuming the battery is OK.

I prefer a swinging needle volt meter but a D.V.O.M (digital volt/ohm meter) will do.

With the key to cranking position there is only 1 volt on the lead from the battery at the starter to a good ground? if so, try the same test with one of the probes on the + post and one of the probes on the + cable on the post. If still only 1 volt, the issue is between the post and the cable at the battery. Next test is to put a lead at the + battery connector on the starter and the other on the + battery post and crank it. If the meter goes negative, reverse the leads and retest. If it shows 0 volts the cable is OK and you have a grounding issue. Any voltage above 1 volt while doing a voltage drop that wire is suspect. You are testing the ability of that conductor to pass amperage. I hope this makes sense to you... it is late, I am tired and sometimes what is in the brain doesn't get put on the forum correctly.

Using jumper cables is a good way of bypassing the B+ lead from the battery to the starter.

This is the proper way to figure it out... the quick and dirty way is to put your hand on the positive cable by the battery and have someone crank it... if it is no good it will heat up instantly and the cable might even jump.

 

Connect one of your cables to negative battery terminal the other to the engine.

 

Did you ever get it figured out ? Hope so - it's been 5 years.