About to Dust my Duster that Won't Start!

-
H

holguinsj

Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2014
Messages
7
Reaction score
0
Location
Twentynine Palms
Ok, so I am new to the forum and heard that there are some borderline genius individuals on here regarding the infamous slant 6.

I have a 74 duster and it's been sitting almost since I bought it. Going through and correcting all of the little infractions that the previous owner did.

I had a cold morning a few weeks ago and the car died backing out of my driveway so I jumped it thinking it may have been just a cold battery. On my way to work it died in traffic, no power when I turned the ignition.

I brought it home and diagnosed it and this is what I've come to: battery, alternator, and starter are all good (tested). New starter relay, balast resistor, voltage regulator, coil, and ECU. Have wiring harness exposed and fixed a few burnt out wires (the strange red wire going through firewall with what looks like a pin connector in a plastic casing burnt out and fried a couple wires along the way. looks like its the wire feeding into my ammeter on the dash???)

Now I installed new battery cables, and corrected the push-button and toggle that the guy had installed wrong, and when I go to start it, it'll turn over like the battery is dying out and whine. Battery reads 14v and when ignition is pressed, drops to 6v.

My question I guess is, where could I possibly have a short or is there something else I'm missing? I'm pretty mechanically inclined and basically have the ignition hardwired straight in so that it should just fire. Any help would be appreciated!!!
 
Very first thing would be to load test that battery, if it hasn't been done already.
12 volts doesn't mean anything if the batter can't supply the amps.

Then,
Battery, to engine, to body grounded well.
Sticky worn starter.

If you are mechanically inclined then you will remember that a bad connection causes heat.
If all the grounds are good, then you might crank it till it's working hard at it then check for heat at connections and terminals.

(just a few thoughts off the top that may help you)

By the way, that red wire you spoke of is the wire that carries the power load for almost everything in the car.
Does it get hot when cranking?
If it has been replaced, are you pretty sure it is big enough of a wire to carry the loads?

The amp meter bypass mod is a really good thing to do also.
 
LOL. I was thinking and typing as TB was posting.

Check the battery terminals this has fooled many a mechanic.

Get yourself a test lamp, a multimeter, and a bag of clip leads from Radio Shack Get yourself a shop manual. A FACTORY shop manual

Unfortunately you have a 74, which means there are no free downloadable shop manuals. Either get a paper repop or a "on CD" off the www, or Ebay.



Strange red wire...........


Sounds to me like you have this infamous problem, that is damage wiring.

Start by reading this article

http://www.madelectrical.com/electricaltech/amp-gauges.shtml

Down the page is a simplified diagram that covers "most" of these cars primary voltage supply

Follow along on the diagram below:

Start at the battery, follow down to the starter relay and down through the fusible link. Now notice that this wire (red) goes through the BULKHEAD CONNECTOR. This wire, and particularly that connector terminal must carry ALL the current in the car except for the starter. This terminal and the one coming from the alternator are the two most prone to damage

Also on the list (after 40 some years) is the ammeter and it's connectors, the ignition / headlight switch connectors, the switches themselves, and in rare cases

find down on the right side (black) of the ammeter the "welded splice." Rare, but these HAVE been known to fail, and there's a couple of members right on here who have experienced that problem.

amp-ga18.jpg
 
Just thinking out loud here, couldn't have anything to do with the seatbelt-ignition interlock system that was used in '74?
 
goldfish65 said:
Just thinking out loud here, couldn't have anything to do with the seatbelt-ignition interlock system that was used in '74?
Click to expand...

OBOY that's a 'eck of good point

This will not kill "all" power but it will prevent the key from cranking the engine.

Find the seat belt reset under the hood.......a box the size of a horn relay with a push-button reset. Clip the two "yellowish" wires and hook them permanently together

Couple'a threads on the subject

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=14304

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?p=1969624169
 
Touch the two posts on the starter together. If it turns over problem is between the starter and the key. Could be bad ignition switch.
 
Goldfish I was kind of thinking the same exact thing about the seatbelt interlock. I just replaced all of the floorpan sections that were bad and when I went to put the seats back in I re-connected the wiring to it, so maybe that could be shorting somewhere.

To everybody else, I took the starter, alternator, and battery out and brought them in to my local O'Reilly's (I don't trust Autozone too much nowadays) and they put all three through tests and they ran fine. The car ran like a dream for a month or so before this happened.

I replaced that "fusible link" with some 10g wiring, and was even considering putting maybe a 20-30a inline in there just in case it smokes out again but I'm not sure because I've never seen that mod before.

But the car as of right now won't even crank hard enough to fire. It'll slowly crank like I said, as if the battery is going curplunt. And as soon as I stop cranking, the battery voltage will jump right back up to 14v.

I initially began the diag. noticing that when loads were put on the car while parked (brake depressed, heat on, radio on, lights on) I'd slowly begin to lose voltage at the battery meaning the alternator wasn't charging....then I followed all above steps and still kind of at sqaure one.
 
You need to post some specifics. What are you getting for voltage and where

You can NOT use a 20-30A fuse in place of the fuse link. PLEASE read what I posted above.
 
I'm using my jeep for a jump start when trying to get it fired. So when I hook the cables up, my battery at the posts are reading 13.6. When cranking the motor, the voltage just at the battery (haven't gone further up the line after that) drops to around 8v. I have done the "bump the starter" test and I do get spark and the motor will turn over, just not with enough juice to get it to fire.
 
Also, when you go under my dash, going along with that welded splice you were talking about that plugs into the two posts in my ameter, those weren't even hooked up when I got the thing. I konw from reading that I can either eliminate that entire circuit and convert to a voltage meter, but I think I'll keep it original, the red wire goes to the red post and the black wire coming off of that splice goes to the black if I'm correct. But this shouldn't affect anything if I ran the car fine for a month should it?
 
At this point, hard to say. Sounds like someone either did or try to bypass the ammeter

Sounds like maybe it's not charging

Voltage with a jumper hooked up is leading you astray

Check voltage RIGHT ON the tops of the battery posts. Not the clamps, the posts

This will tell you if the battery is dead

If you have at least 12 there, check at the clamps. If you get voltage there, turn on some loads, IE turn on the key, the heater, the headlights, then recheck between the posts and clamps

This will show up a bad connection there
 
On a side note, not a bad idea to disconnect your positive battery cable when the car is not in use, to safeguard against an electrical fire...
 
So the final (or what i'm pretty sure is going to be the final) is: Just because you all mentioned it I tried a different battery. Basically pulled the battery off of my Jeep and hooked it in. Little **** fired right up haha So what I'm thinking is that whoever owned it before me, had some kind of jumper wire coming off of the alternator and running into that little main red wire going into my ammeter (instead of a battery source they ran it through the alternator). Then I corrected the wiring on the push button that was installed becasue that was running direct power whether it was on or off I could at least turn over the car. I'm thinking that somewhere in this mix that was enought to short out the battery and cause my car to fry some good old wiring.

Thanks to all of the help from everybody on here and I'll be sure to come on back and ask for help when I undertake my next project. I'm thinking the engine itself is going to need a good overhaul anyways because adjusting the timing was a pain seeing as how I can only get it advnced to -12!!!! haha
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top