big problem..

[floydwall888]

Well as a couple of you may know in the past couple months I've been building my stang back to it's glory days. This last weekend was going to be the first time the car fired since I've owned it.

So we've got everything looking good; new dash harness, new headlight harness, dash back in, oil spun up, tranny filled up(new tranny), mini starter in, new power and ground cables...everything is looking good.

So I jump in the car to turn it over for the first time...I turn the key and the fuel pump does not kick on  so at this point were saying screw it, maybe a bad fuel pump or maybe something else but we don't care we just wanna make sure the motor is going to turn over. So my buddy tries to jump the starter of the solenoid. Here's where it goes down hill..

As soon as he does a big blue flash (arc) comes from down where the drivers side header is  after cleaning my shorts (i was leaning over the fender) I jumped back in the car and nothing, no power anywhere. great! So we start testing fuses, checking to see which lines are hot and so on. Everything is good. Every single thing is getting power, but nothing is happening. This is telling me, that it's getting the power, but it's backfeed.

Now before we start thinking the usuall things, remember that everything was working fine before we tried jumping the starter. There are a couple things that I believe it could be, but I'm really looking for any suggestions or any ideas you guys might have. I'm thinking one, the ignition is fried which is why the circuit is not complete and everything is getting backfeed, or two the computer is fried causing the same thing. And yeah, the entire car is charged when the battery is connected. Any help or ideas would be great guys. I've been saying "this is the weekend it's going to fire and I'm going to be driving it Monday) for the last month....

[Gravel]

I dont recall where the fuse able links are, but you should probably check those.

[floydwall888]

fusable links=checked

[NUTTSGT]

Power to the starter is grounding out on the header...dead short. Check the power wire going to the starter, make sure it is not touching the header.

[TireSmoke]

did you check to make sure the little accident cut off switch in the back of the car is not tripped?  If it is, your car will not start...fuel pump will not prime either.

[quake101]

did you check to make sure the little accident cut off switch in the back of the car is not tripped?  If it is, your car will not start...fuel pump will not prime either.

I was thinking the same thing. Mine was tripped after sitting all winter while I did my rebuild.

[floydwall888]

Power to the starter is grounding out on the header...dead short. Check the power wire going to the starter, make sure it is not touching the header.

That actually make some good sense there....I will definitely check that as soon as I can get back to the shop.

did you check to make sure the little accident cut off switch in the back of the car is not tripped?  If it is, your car will not start...fuel pump will not prime either.

Yeah my buddy said he checked it and flipped it, but i don't know how you could tell either way because he just stuck his finger in the little hole thats there and flipped it. This may be the fuel pump issue, but wouldn't cause everything to back feed.

Thanks a lot for the help guys

[floydwall888]

Power to the starter is grounding out on the header...dead short. Check the power wire going to the starter, make sure it is not touching the header.

Well, looks like thats not the issue....

Were going to go ahead and swap out the ignition and see if thats where the problem lyes.

[Gravel]

Diagnosing problems like this is not an easy thing to do. There are a lot of different things that can go wrong in a fresh setup and its going to take systematic elimination to find the root source.

[floydwall888]

Diagnosing problems like this is not an easy thing to do. There are a lot of different things that can go wrong in a fresh setup and its going to take systematic elimination to find the root source.

Very true sir. I guess I've just been saying "this is going to be the day it fires" for so long, that now it just makes me sick to even go work on it because I feel it will never be "the day". I've been around building/restoring cars my entire life so I know this just comes with the game, but this is my first fox chassis mustang and it's just driving me nuts watching it sit there....especially with all this nice weather lately.

I'll keep you guys updated on the progress, be working on it friday-sunday so maybe we'll come up with something.

[floydwall888]

Guess what....IT FIRED! After countless hours of troubleshooting, we walked in with a clear head and had the power issue fixed within seconds. The problem was, grounds. The original battery cable has the little wire along the side of it that is grounded to the frame, well since we bought one at advanced...didn't have it. So we got that all figured out and going...

Then the starter wasn't catching the flywheel  After three trips to town for three diffrent starters we finally figured out the problem; seems the guy I got it from used a tremmec bell housing which was causing the starter to be just a hair off of where it needed to be. So, we picked up a older model starter, popped it in and....vrooooom. A little louder than vroom considering it was open BBK equal lengths and thats it  I did get the H pipe hung up and this weekend where going to try and finish everything else up so I can go finish the exhaust somewhere. It was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time.

[Bwhitty799]

Glad to hear you got it fixed.