Car or Truck Engine Wont Start How to Diagnose a Bad Starter

Uh-oh. Might need a starter. Let's find out.

So if you go to start your vehicle and you have nothing at all, or if you just hear one [vocalization], it could potentially be a starter. If you go to start the vehicle and you have a chatter type noise, it keeps [vocalization], then it could be your battery. And if you have a cranking no-start, then it's probably not your battery or your starter.

Before you even attempt to try to diagnose a starter problem, you wanna make sure your battery is up to par. Make sure it's fully charged up. Make sure you grab the connections. Make sure they're nice and tight.

All right, so this is actually a digital battery charger which is actually gonna give us information about the battery. I'm gonna select lead-acid battery. Click it again, lead-acid battery. And then wait for the charger to do its thing. It's gonna analyze the battery. Now it shows that it's charging, 12 volts at 12%. So this battery needs to be brought back to life before we even check anything out.

Now, 12%, that only means that's what the state of charge is. It doesn't mean the battery's bad or good. It's just that's what the level is. Now we need to bring that back up as close to 100% as possible. If it doesn't get even close to that, it probably needs a battery.

All right, it's always a good idea to check your fuses. Take a test light. Put it on the negative terminal. Double-check your test light. And it works. Open the fuse box. All right, so what you can do is just check each fuse. Just like that. There's a little opening on the fuse which you can push the test light in. Make sure that it lights up on both sides. Now you could just check the fuse for the starter, but it's always a good idea just to check them all, make sure they're good.

Now if you find a fuse that's blown, and you replace it, and everything's good, that doesn't mean that was the only problem. You need to look further into it. Fuses don't just blow on their own. There's normally another problem, whether the starter is drawing too much amperage or there's a wire that's shorted out.

All right, now we need to locate the starter. Most starters are underneath the vehicle somewhere near the engine and transmission, somewhere near the bell housing like this one. We're gonna have the starter body right here and the solenoid. The solenoids come with the starters now. In the past, some of the solenoids were separate from the starters. But for the most part, most starters have the solenoids attached to it. So you want to locate that. Some are here. Some are on the passenger side. Some will be towards the front of the vehicle. If you have a front-wheel-drive vehicle, maybe in the front underneath or even somewhere up top. Some are actually under the intake of the vehicle. It's kinda hard to get to.

So we know our battery's charged up. Everything's good up top. All the connections are good. What we wanna do is check the power wire at the starter. Now this power wire should have battery power all the time. So what we can do is take a test light, find somewhere on the vehicle where there's a good ground. And then just make sure that there's power going to it. And there's power going to that. So that's the first step. So that's how the starter gets its power. How the starter gets its ground is through the engine block or the transmission. It just grounds itself through the case. And then how to turn on the starter, what switches on the starter is this wire right here. This goes to the ignition switch. It may go through a relay and some fuses. Some of these are just a connector like this, and some are actually a stud with a nut on the end of it.

All right, so if I disconnect this and put a jumper wire through here. You don't wanna put your test light right in there. But if you put a jumper wire and then run it to your test light so the other end of the test light is gonna go here on the negative battery terminal. And this is attached to that signal wire on the starter or the on switch.

Now I'm gonna try to start the vehicle. And the light lights up. So you know your power wire to the starter is good. You know the ground is good, grounded to the block. And we know the signal wire or the ignition wire to the starter is good. In that case, you're gonna need a starter.

So let's say you're in an emergency situation and you need to move the car whether it's in your yard and you know you have a bad starter or you're out in pubic somewhere and you just gotta get the vehicle home. What you can do is take a hammer and while someone is actually turning the key, just give the starter a couple hits. What that's gonna do is there is brushes inside the starter, and they may not be making good contact. And when you give it a tap with the hammer, it's gonna jar that starter a little bit so you get a good contact and hopefully it engages.

So a couple tips if your vehicle isn't starting. One thing you can also check is if you put your foot on the brake, put the car in neutral and try to start it. And if it starts in neutral but it doesn't start in park, there's probably something wrong with your range selector switch. And then another situation, if you had a manual transmission and the clutch switch was not working properly, that could cause a no-start.

So if you're working on your own personal vehicle and you know the history, you know everything that's been going on with the vehicle, you drive it every day, and then you go out to start it one day, and it won't start, chances are it's probably just the starter. But if it's a vehicle you're checking out, you don't know the history on, there could be a potential that the engine is seized, and a new starter isn't gonna fix that. So what you wanna do is take a socket and a breaker bar and just make sure the engine actually turns. And you wanna go in a clockwise motion. Just like that. Just put it on the crank bolt, and as long as the engine turns, then you know the engine's not seized.

So there's some tips on how to diagnose a bad starter. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to our channel, make sure you ring that bell, turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our videos.