I decided today would be a good day for me to stop procrastinating and put my 10.5 hotside and o2 housing on. I should have known it was going to be a bad day after breaking an exhaust stud off, but I managed to swap the housings and hotside's in about 2.5 hours. Not too bad I thought, but I still had to get that broken stud out. I tried everything I could and finally had to weld a stud onto the 1/4" of the old one that was hanging out of the head, and it holds well so far. Now for the big problem, I got everything back together, hop in the car to check for leaks, turn the key...and nothing! The starter won't even turn the motor over! What's going on here? I turn the key on and I hear some clicking noises from under the hood, all the dash lights come on, the SRS and anti-lock lights go off but the SES light stays on. I checked what codes it might be but my code reader says there's nothing wrong. Then I checked the flash, EcuFlash says it's good and even tried reburning it just in case. Anyone have any ideas? I checked the underhood fuses too and everything looks good, and now I'm stumped and have to get this pile of junk running for work on Monday.

 

the clicking noise is usually the starter solenoid clicking over, but not enough juice from the battery to turn over the motor.

charge your battery over night, and next time dont leave the radio on in your car

 

Nope, I know that sound, that's not it. I thought about that too so I stuck a charger on it for a while just in case, but the battery was still fully charged. Only thing I can think of that might've happened was I fried something when I tried welding a nut onto that broken stud, and I realized I forgot to unhook the battery so I stopped and did so.

 

check fuses

 

yeah!

 

check all your fuses/relays, you must a blown some while welding...

 

I went through the fuses under the hood, everything looks good still. Tomorrow I'm going to go through the one's under the dash. The clicking sound I mentioned above only seems to happen when I first turn the key on, then when I turn the key to the "start" position there's a whining sound kind of like the fuel pump only under the hood. I checked the diagrams for the ignition circuit and there's practically nothing to it, so I guess I'll look at the starter too while I'm at it.

 

when you welded the new stud on where did you ground? was it as close as possible to the head where the broken stud was? rule of thumb when welding on anything that has a ECU is to dissconnect the ECU if possible. not saying this is your def problem, but i know ive welded on many cars/machines and ive always disconnected the ecu's and never had any problems. maybe something to look into?

 

I went to the hook point on the head, about 3" away from the broken stud. I'm pretty sure the ecu is still ok, hopefully it was only something stupid like a blown fuse. This is really the first time I've ever had a major issue with welding on a car, but I'm still puzzled why the starter won't even turn over and the SES light won't go off. Normally it should go off after a few seconds of turning the key on correct?

 

yea, like i said, not saying this is your problem just trying to shoot out ideas of possibilities. if you grounded it close there no worries, its when your welding in the engine bay and ground it to the rear axle or somewhere stupid is when you need to worry. haha. pretty sure also the SES light stays on until the car is started. i know its a ***** to get at but try tapping the starter with a hammer a few times lightly too, its a old dumb trick but has worked for me a few times on other vehicles. sometimes when they develope dead spots after alot of use they dont want to turn over and need to get rattled a little bit

 

Thanks, I'll give your suggestions a shot tomorrow and see what happens.

 

I checked all the fuses first thing this morning, all were good so I took a hammer to the starter and tapped on it. What do you know, it started right up! Something from welding must have arc'd in the starter, but it works fine now. The SES light was still on and Scan-Tech still showed no codes, but I reset the SES light and it went away. Thanks for the help guys!

 

The hammer trick has worked for me on numerous occasions.

 

glad things worked out for you bud! welding on cars can do funky things to it where you least expect it.