I have a GSL-SE with an S5 engine running on a Haltech. I'm having an issue where my car sometimes does not crank. I hear a click when I turn the key but the engine does not turn over.

I removed the starter and had it tested, and it turned out fine. I think it must have something to do with grounds but I can't figure it out.


I have a 0g ground wire between my battery and starter, and 4g from the battery to center iron, then on the firewall. I tried clamping. jumper cables between the engine block and frame at various places to see if I maybe had insufficient grounds but it had no effect. Any other ideas on what this could be caused by?

 

A click tells me the starter has the 12v trigger. If the ground is good, try bump starting (popping the clutch while rolling). If that works I'm saying the starter.

I'm not familiar with the Haltech so I don't know if it has any parameters that need to be meet before allowing the engine to crank.

 

There's nothing special about an SE starter; if the battery can supply enough power to it, it spins when the Bendix (*solenoid) kicks the pinion gear into the flywheel, thereby closing contacts for the 12v to get to the Starter motor to spin. If you get a click and no whirr, then the contacts at the front of the Starter Bendix are likely corroded, damaged, or your wiring for + OR - are insufficient to carry the working load.

Both grounds and power leads can look fine on the outside and be corroded on the inside, and the only way to test them is with a multimeter checking for internal resistance.

Also, 99% of the time,... it's a bad battery.

 

Thanks. For a little more info, the wiring is all brand new. I made my own harness and battery wires. No sign of corrosion anywhere yet. The battery is a brand new Optima red also, and it did the same thing with the previous costco battery.

The starter is an 8 year old duralast remanufactured unit. I am not sure I can still swap it out under warranty if it tests good but I don't really know what else to think right now.

 

You've got a short in the lines somewhere. In your video, I noticed a few things;

1) Your Tach needle is moving when it shouldn't - this could be caused by a wire in the loom using the white ECU trigger wire from the Trailing Coil as a ground to the dash. It could also be a wire in the loom which is shorting to the dashboard somewhere and this is a side-effect unrelated to the starter.

2) Your Idiot Lights are dimming excessively when cranking - while it's normal for these to dim slightly as the battery is tasked with running all of its current to the high load starter, your lights seem to be dimming a LOT more than normal. This could be a bad battery, a bad cell in the battery, or high internal resistance within the battery. Which means, you should try putting in a new battery. Even Optima batteries are not what they used to be these days. Take a known good lead acid battery and hook it up, just as a test, because that's the most likely culprit if you're getting the Starter to spin at all in the first place. Click, no start = lack of current.

Recheck your grounds and power leads to the Starter while you're at it.

Also, another mechanical idea; the starter pinion gear may be bottoming out against the flywheel and preventing clean rotation. Compare the old and new starter 'noses' - the part that inserts into the transmission bell housing - and see if they are the same size and length. Also, look closely at the driven pinion gears and make sure they're the same size and number of teeth.

Apart from that, electrical gremlins are some of the hardest things to track down in my experience, especially intermittent shorts...

 

Thank you for calling out the dimming dash lights! I actually think that was the clue I needed.
Years back when I restored this car it sat outside in a humid environment and some of the interior wires corroded. I wound up having shorts in the clutch switch and speaker wires, and I'd forgotten about that. Well... tonight I pulled fuses under the dash and it turns out if I remove the 'cigar' fuse the car seems to start every time and dash lights don't dim as much. I'm willing to bet I have a short somewhere past that particular fuse in the dash harness. If you hadn't pointed out the dimming lights I don't think I would have thoughts about. Now I know where I need to be digging!

As for the tach sweep, it's expected with a Haltech elite ECM. It's programmed to do a 2000rpm sweep on startup. I also tried at least 3 known good batteries and ALL did the same thing, so I believe I can safely rule that out.

 

Easiest way to rule out wiring/ starter/battery, is multi meter the power@the red power cable connector/ed to the starter & then with a small jump wire connected to the starter signal(the small input connector -normally a spade connector) jump straight to the main power & it will either crank or it won't..... & If it doesn't the multi meter will tell the story.

 

If you had a short in a battery cable, you wouldn't have a no start, you would have an electrical fire.
battery cables are unfused, they will happily just burn when shorted.
I ran into this when swapping an FC starter into an FB.
I had an SA, FB, and nonturbo FC starter laid out side by side.
all have the starter gear in the same place relative to the mounting bore. All transmissions have the mounting bore in the same place relative to the flywheel. All N/A have the same flywheel diameter.
The starters all had different teeth! I would like to say SA was 7, FB was 8, and FC was 11. No way can this work!
I posted a thread about it, people said "I never noticed". I put the starter in.... and it worked fine.

Mazda does weird things!