Weird question...

[Mercury Mike]

I was idling the mustang and I had it sweet. Like..... perfect. And then I disconnected my tach wire from the coil, and then the ground wire, and the engine stalled immediately. After that my starter turned like a quarter of the way, and then stopped. It won't turn the engine anymore. I can pretty much say that my starter is fried... but could something have happened when I pulled my tach wire? It was running super sweet and then just stalled out and the starter wouldn't turn it. Bah!

 

[Anonymous]

somthing you did engaged the starter while the engine was running? maybe... try pulling the starter and see if that fixes it

 

[Mercury Mike]

sounds like a plan. Right when I disconnected the ground wire, there was a loud whirring noise, and then the engine stopped moving. I think my problem with my car stalling is my starter keeps moving forward because it's old. It sounds bad when I try to start it, too. Soooooo, new starter time! I'm selling my old exhaust manifold to LaGrasta tomorrow, so I will have the $$$ to get one. On the upside, I got my holley tuned PERFECTLY! It's UNBELIEVEABLE!

 

[Anonymous]

yeah, I just replaced my starter.... starts up much better now my fuel pump and starter died at exactly the same time :roll: at 10 at night on the way home from work nowhere near home... that was fun :roll:

 

[Mercury Mike]

Yeah, that just kind of sucks. My fuel pump went out awhile ago... I also have a kink in my fuel line... I think I'll replace it. Thanks for the info, I'll have a new starter tomorrow.

 

[fordconvert]

How did you have your tach hooked up? The from the coil and to ground doesnt quite make sense with the tachs I have worked with. Does yours have 2 or 3 wires? Refresh my memory on what type of ignition system you have.

 

[Mercury Mike]

2 wires on the tach, green and black. The green goes to the dizzy side of the coil, and one goes to ground. Right?

 

[fordconvert]

Its been a millon years since I had a 2 wire one but just thinking of the circut, the dizzy side of coil goes to the points which goes to ground so the other wire to make a circut would have to be a + which could be the other + side of coil or just the + side of the battery. If you are between Ground and the dizzy side of the coil your reading is going to be through the coil which is not going to be correct for either dwell or rpm. I suppose it coould be designed to work like that but I would think differnces in the coils would throw off the readings. Green seems to be the color for the coil and black would seem like it should be ground. Maybe its just a model I have never seen. Can you get online and find instructions to be sure? Did it seem to work?

Still doesnt explain what happend to your starter. Just for fun use an ohm meter between the starter side of the solonoid and the small terminal (i think white wire) closest to the starter lead. There should be no connection between those posts unless the key is in the start position. The little wire on that side connects to the ignition coil for the 12v boost when cranking. This is my only idea how the starter could have been engaged from working near the coil. There should be nothing but the big starter wire on the big post. The little post on the battery side should only have one wire that goes to the key, it may pass through a park/neut switch. The battery side will have several wires on it. With the engine running you should have system voltage 13-14 on the battery side terminal and nothing on the little one near the battery or the big starter side one. The little one on the starter side should have around 9 volts because it is being fed through the ballast resistor.

 

[pedal2themetal45]

Fordconvert I think your confusing a hand held tach/dwell meter with an in the car tack.... All Talk/Dwell meters I have seen are 2 wire.. hot wire goes to the little wire going to the dizzy and a ground..
Tim

 

[fordconvert]

I assumed he had some sort of hand held tach since he talked about removing the wires.

My meter has a red+ black- and a green. I have had it for a long time, got it at a pawn shop for $20 I love it because it has a very large display (6x10") and has a selector switch for 4,6,&8 so I dont have to remember which scale to read or do math. Also does volts, and amps. Its a sears, not sure if they still make anything like it.

65stang200,
Had time to explore the starter issue further? Im kinda curious to hear what happend.

 

[Mercury Mike]

Nah, my buddy came in from Florida today, and I had to pick him up. I'm going to pull it out tomorrow and take it down for the core charge. I'm hoping my flywheel gears aren't all eaten up! If they are, you know what that means........ 3 spd manual swap! I like the C4, though. I'll figure out what I'm gonna do about it soon enough.