Hard start weird situation

I\'ve got a problem that has me like a ball in tall weeds,lost! My customer has a B that when left out in the cold for a couple of days the battery gets so low it hardly turns the car over. He has a new battery,and alternator. I have checked both and they check out fine. The alternator is putting out 14.5 volts at the battery with lights on bright,radio,heater fan,emergengy flashers on and the brake lights on. The battery holds 12 volts and load test fine. When ingaging the starter there is no heavy load on the battery. Once it has started and driven 15 min it spins over like normal. I replaced the ground strap at the battery and cleaned the battery posts and positive clamp. In weather like we\'re having now there is no problem. It\'s not real cold right now. Back last week when he first tried to start it there was nothing. Not even the solinoid clicking. Two to three tries and it would spin over just enough to start her. Then like I said 15 min later it would spin over just fine. I would suspect to thick of oil,but he has the same oil I have in my B and not near the compression and I\'m not having any problem. Got any ideas

was the starter ever changed, Tom..?

Check to see if the car has a stereo power amplifier. I have seen the same situation that drove me nuts. Turned out that the guy wired a stereo amplifier into a constant 12v off the battery. the amp would stay on no matter if the ignition was on or off and the amp would drain the battery in about a day.
I haven't seen this on a B but another possibility is starter solinoid failing in such a way that that it causes a constant battery drain. It never shows up when checking for a load under starting engagement.

Tom, You didn't mention the chassis ground strap. I don't need tell you that if this strap is defective that the engine will try to ground through whatever is handy. The cold start-up problem probably leads back to mushy motormounts and a cruddy ground strap. Worth a try.

Eddie Petty, Courtland, Va.

Typically if the engine/chassis ground strap went bad, the first thing to act as an engine ground is the throttle cable. You would see the plastic casing around the throttle cable begin to smoke when the starter begins to turn over.

The non clicking solonoid is a puzzlement to me, but the rest seems vaguely familiar. As I remember you had quite a bit of dampness along with your cold weather. If that was the situation, it could be burned main contacts in the solonoid. A rough contact surface, dampness, and cold could cause the contacts to develope very high resistance. That wouldn't cause excessive amperage draw, but would cause a hell of an a voltage drop to the starter. With the solonoid being attached to the starter the way it is there's no place to measure that drop. After running 15 minutes everything becomes a lot more efficient than it is dead cold.

Since it doesn't work, then works without doing something to it, I'm guessing it is in the starter somewhere as suggested above.
It's way cold, metal shrinks away from the other metal. Temp changes abit,or the planets realign, the Prince blinks, whatever, and you again have contact.

The starter is less than a year old. I dare say the way this guy drives this car it has less than 3000 miles on it. It still has the sticker on it. I had already put a second ground strap from bell housing to the crossmember bolt on body. It may be that the solinoid has went bad that was going to be my next angle of attack. Some times we give these parts too much creit for being good just because they are relatively new.

Go for it Tom. If there was any contamination on the new solonoid contacts they could screw up real quick.

Tom,are the batteries fully charged when you first try to start it? I'm thinking that there might be a short drawing the batteries down, so there is not enough voltage to turn it properly when it is cold. Otherwise it is probaly that just about new solenoid.

I favor JDW's solenoid solution, but maybe the battery has a bad cell or weak cell that is temperature sensitive.

Another wrinkle to this problem is I let the car set for three days in the shop with the heat cut off the weekend of the snow. We had 20 degree weather and Monday morning it spun like a top. I checked if there was something draging the battery down and didn't find anything. The battery load tested fine so I don't suspect a bad cell. I guess the only thing that's left is the starter. Boy he's going to be pissed because I think it's out of warrenty.

One last thought: have you checked the continuity from the key switch to the solenoid when it isn't cranking?

For those who aren't really electrical types, one thing to check is this. Check voltage at the battery while cranking, then check voltage at the terminal on the starter on the load side of the solenoid contact. If the solenoid voltage is lower, you've got a high resistance connection. Check again on the line side of the solenoid contact and if it's higher than the load side, it's a bad solenoid. Bottom line....anywhere you have a voltage drop, you have a high resistance problem.

Easy way to see if it's the solenoid is to jumper across the two big terminals on the starter. This bypasses the solenoid contact. If the starter spins OK, it's the solenoid contact.

Tom,

Mine (Lucas) acted nearly the same way and only in cold weather. Finally removed starter and disassembled it. The spot weld at the strap connecting field coils to brushes was NFG and broke during exam. Strap appeared to be disimilar mat'l and would *not* re-solder to copper brush wire. Mine was out of warranty and an Autozone rebuild. Got new (rebuilt) from local (independent) parts house. Works great. Yeah, I took it apart to check rebuild. Much better than the Autozone one. Way too many P & W round motors in my blood, gotta check everything...