Electrical problem solved


jaxgt

GT Owner
Mark IV Lifetime
Jul 12, 2006
2,794
I drove my car to my mechanic friend's private workshop today for its annual oil change and check up. The drive went fine. I parked outside, and five minutes later the car wouldn't start. Had weird electrical gremlins, lights flashing, gauges moving up and back etc... Starter wouldn't engage.

At first we figured it was a bad ground or maybe a bad battery. After checking, the ground and battery were fine. After pushing the car into his shop in 90 deg weather (at least it happened 50 feet away from his garage door, not in traffic somewhere), he got it up on his lift and checked it out

To make a long story short - the wire to the starter must have gradually gotten real hot from my exhaust setup, and the connection started to go bad. Of note, I have Ford CAT delete pipes and Ford Racing Muffler.

He cleaned up wire and reconnected it, then custom fashioned a small additional heat shield for it to prevent it from happening again.

Those of you without CATs might want to check for heat damage near the starter and wire next time your car is up on a lift.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_5756.JPG
    IMG_5756.JPG
    89.1 KB · Views: 393
Last edited:

nautoncall

GT Owner
Mark II Lifetime
Apr 6, 2014
1,093
Thanks for the info. Glad it was simple and right at the shop.
 

Xcentric

GT Owner
Mark II Lifetime
Jul 9, 2012
5,213
Myakka City, Florida
 

Specracer

GT Owner
Mark IV Lifetime
Nov 28, 2005
7,081
MA
My starter trigger shows signs of melting with cats. I'm assuming from the track use.
 

GKW05GT

GT Owner
Mark II Lifetime
May 28, 2011
2,755
Fayetteville, Ga.
Lucky it wasn't on those awesome Texas hill country drives!
 

ultrasportracing

GT Owner
Aug 31, 2011
490
Perth Western Australia
well at least if all else fails they are easy to push start
 

Magic

GT Owner
Mark IV Lifetime
Mar 13, 2010
742
Fredericksburg, TX
I had the same problem with cat deletes and FRRP muffler. No extra heat shielding added when this set-up was first installed. Melted the starter connector and damaged the connection in the starter. Final solution was new connector, new starter, cats back on and changed to GTGuys exhaust. No problem since.
 

soroush

Ford Gt Owner
Mark II Lifetime
Aug 8, 2007
5,256
nice fix!

Had the same problem ended up replacing the plastic clip that is used to insert the wire in the starter,, its actually a Toyota part number if you can believe that :) I'm sure the same thing has already happened again and the whole thing is probably one big melted ball..