Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, September 11, 2004 at 10:00PM :
In Reply to: starting problems posted by markus on Saturday, September 11, 2004 at 6:33PM :
You got good voltage at the starter itself? Put a voltmeter between the heavy terminal of the starter and the case of the starter while somebody cranks the engine. If the voltage drops way down (below maybe 8 volts or so), put the voltmeter directly on the battery posts (not the cable clamps) and check again. If the battery voltage is nearly as low as it was at the starter, your battery is bad or is not charged. If the voltage at the battery is close to 12 but the voltage at the starter is way less, start looking for bad connections. You can use a voltmeter across each suspect connection such as starter case to block, block to chassis, chassis to (-) battery post, starter (+) wire to solenoid, solenoid to (+) battery post, etc., or just crank it for a long time and feel all the connections to see which one is getting hottest. Sometimes the bad one will even start smoking.
Of course it's possible that the engine is dragging internally due to any number of bad things that happened while it sat.