Hi everyone. A friend (whom I'll call CG) and I are trying to revive his Mustang track car, which has been languishing in his garage for almost 3 years. It was in good running order when he parked it, but would not start after we tried to fire it up this weekend.
We tried to jump start the battery, which seemed to work. When CG tried to switch the car on, the starter motor clicked and then clicked some more. Once out of several attempts with the old battery, the starter got maybe a half crank in there and thudded. I didn't hear it as well because I was in the truck doing the jumping. But there was a definite finality to that thud.
So we drove the battery to Autozone, and they confirmed it at bad. We brought back our new battery and tried again. Same thing. So I guess the jump start had actually worked? The starter would now only do a single initial click. That's the solenoid in the starter motor closing, right?
When we put the car on jackstands and crawled underneath, we were shocked to find that only 1 of the 3 bolts holding the starter to the bellhousing was attached. The others were just missing. So that's pretty scary. Anyways, CG tried to start it while I looked at it from below to see if we could learn any more.
It seemed to me like the click was coming from within the bellhousing, where the starter gear meshes with the flywheel. In any case, I could feel the vibrations from the click if I put my hand on the starter or bellhousing.
Here's our ideas:
- bad starter. Seems likely, given the evidence we saw.
- Clutch fused to flywheel. The starter might have too much load to turn things over. Counter evidence was the one successful crank we got out of it. Maybe there's enough flex in the driveline to allow that?
- Something in the tranny is messed up. Evidence is that CG thought the shifter was really hard to move between gears, although that did improve as we rolled the car back into the garage.
Other things we tried:
- we raised the rear of the car, put it in neutral, and were able to spin the rear wheels by grabbing the driveshaft and twisting. So it's not that the rear diff is locked up.
- we then put it into gear and were unable to spin the driveshaft. Seems reasonable that we couldn't run the motor with just manual force from there, though.
- all the other electrical stuff in the car worked: fuel pump engaged fine, lights worked. So it doesn't seem to be a high level electrical issue.
Next time we get to work on it, first thing we'll try is some strong banging on the starter to see if we can dislodge it. Another suggestion I've heard is to manually crank the engine via the crank pulley, just to see if it's seized. Is there a common tip for how to do this in the Foxbody? It seems too cramped to put a wrench or the like around the crank pulley.
Thanks for all the help!
We tried to jump start the battery, which seemed to work. When CG tried to switch the car on, the starter motor clicked and then clicked some more. Once out of several attempts with the old battery, the starter got maybe a half crank in there and thudded. I didn't hear it as well because I was in the truck doing the jumping. But there was a definite finality to that thud.
So we drove the battery to Autozone, and they confirmed it at bad. We brought back our new battery and tried again. Same thing. So I guess the jump start had actually worked? The starter would now only do a single initial click. That's the solenoid in the starter motor closing, right?
When we put the car on jackstands and crawled underneath, we were shocked to find that only 1 of the 3 bolts holding the starter to the bellhousing was attached. The others were just missing. So that's pretty scary. Anyways, CG tried to start it while I looked at it from below to see if we could learn any more.
It seemed to me like the click was coming from within the bellhousing, where the starter gear meshes with the flywheel. In any case, I could feel the vibrations from the click if I put my hand on the starter or bellhousing.
Here's our ideas:
- bad starter. Seems likely, given the evidence we saw.
- Clutch fused to flywheel. The starter might have too much load to turn things over. Counter evidence was the one successful crank we got out of it. Maybe there's enough flex in the driveline to allow that?
- Something in the tranny is messed up. Evidence is that CG thought the shifter was really hard to move between gears, although that did improve as we rolled the car back into the garage.
Other things we tried:
- we raised the rear of the car, put it in neutral, and were able to spin the rear wheels by grabbing the driveshaft and twisting. So it's not that the rear diff is locked up.
- we then put it into gear and were unable to spin the driveshaft. Seems reasonable that we couldn't run the motor with just manual force from there, though.
- all the other electrical stuff in the car worked: fuel pump engaged fine, lights worked. So it doesn't seem to be a high level electrical issue.
Next time we get to work on it, first thing we'll try is some strong banging on the starter to see if we can dislodge it. Another suggestion I've heard is to manually crank the engine via the crank pulley, just to see if it's seized. Is there a common tip for how to do this in the Foxbody? It seems too cramped to put a wrench or the like around the crank pulley.
Thanks for all the help!
