'77 D100

Starter problems

I am replacing the starter relay and was wondering why the battery positive goes to the big terminal on the relay and then to the starter? Is there anything inside the relay attached to the big terminal? I undid the nut, realized that I should not have done that and tightened it back up. It spun once or twice and I'm wondering if I've trashed it.

No use putting it in if its junk now.

Wow there is surprizingly little on here or the web in general on the starter relay.

From what I can gather, the battery positive cable goes directly to the starter motor, the starter relay controls the current to the solenoid from the keyswitch.

The orange wire from key switch provides the control coil with current and the dark green/white grounds the control coil through the neutral switch. The charged control coil closes a switch to provide current to the solenoid via the brown wire. The solenoid both closes the switch to activate the starter motor and moves the fork to engage the drive gear to the flywheel.

So my question is: a) why run the 6 guage battery cable to the relay, why not run the heavy wire directly to the starter terminal and run a smaller guage wire back to the battery post on the relay, and b) what did I damage in the relay by loosening the battery post nut?

To answer question A, either way works perfectly fine. When I relocated my battery I ran 2-gauge to the starter then 6-gauge from the starter to the relay.

When I bought my Dart it had a positive battery terminal with 3 cables (1 4-gauge, and 2 6- or 8-gauge) attached. The large one ran to the starter, 1 of the smaller ones ran to the relay, and the other small one ran to an aftermarket gauge in the cabin.

I guess long story short, you can run the battery cable to the starter then to the relay, to the relay and then to the starter or a wire for each. Just make sure your cables are all big enough to handle the current that the starter will draw.

As for your question about potential damage to the relay... I would imagine it is fine.

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'66 Dodge Dart

good ending to the story; I picked up a new relay at NAPA at lunchtime on Friday and it only took 15 minutes to replace, fired right up and has been good since.

I'm a little late here, but it sounds like you're in good shape now.
Welcome to the site, by the way!

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"Ja, Ich fahre ein altes auto."
'78 Volare 225
'67 Charger 318

So I am still having problems, but first my pressing question about the starter relay: there is that big bolt on the relay that gets the 6 guage cable from the battery (6RE), the 4 guage cable to the starter (4RE) (this I don't understand, why go from 6 to 4 guage?), the 14 guage wire to the fusible link (14RE), and the 12 guage wire (12BN) to the solinoid activated by the relay. If I run a 6 guage to the starter motor, then I should only have to run a 12 guage back up to the starter relay big bolt.

here is my current problem; truck won't start, hear a big click. It's raining. go to work in the jeep. Get back and cross the big bolt on the relay to the 12BN wire and the starter motor goes. take the ground N switch wire off and ground with another wire, just a click, take the positive key orange wire off and jump the tab to the battery positive, starter motor goes. put the ground N switch wire back on and jump the key switch tab to the battery positive and just get a click. WTF?!?

So now today everything is dry and I try the key, get a click and hesitation, then it starts. So I thought that maybe the connectors had enough corosion to be good in the dry and bad in the wet, so I am disconnecting, cleaning and greasing them.

Any advice??? BTW the starter relay is new NAPA.

truck is running again I have to asume it was the rain. I thought it would crank in the rain but not fire, or start and get me 5 miles from home and then quit when I hit a puddle, but was not expecting this. I am thinking there is alot of loss in the wire harness and when it rains each connector becomes a bigger resistor.

So I've seen threads on converting over to relays and that might be an avenue that I'll go down next. It just seems so funny to put a relay in between the harness and the starter relay. Whoda thought?

This episodes idiotics: disconnected the connectors that bring the wiring from under the hood into the cab, cleaned, greased, reconnected TOTALY WRONG. How f-ing arrogant am I anyway, I take them apart and think, no problem, theres only 4 to keep tabs on...hook them all up and reconnect the ground and the right park light goes on, no key. Thats all that works, the right park light is on all the time and nothing else works at all. I'm lucky the thing didn't go up in a ball of flames. So I checked the manual and each connector has an indication on it, ie, two tabs on the right, two tabs on the left, one tab on the right, and a big knuckle at the top, foolproof. FOOLPROOF! I am humility embodied, this truck will get me into heaven.

Hi richie,

Just got back from a camping trip. Wish I could help, but its not going to happen. I think your new question(s) are beyond my understanding or maybe I'm just fried from the weekend. But at least I can bump the topic for you

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'66 Dodge Dart

So it probably wasn't the starter relay at all.

I read the "Alternator wire getting hot" thread and a couple of more on charging circuit problems and REALIZED that those big fat wires from the alternator and battery are the charging circuit and run up to the alt meter in the dash. Now I new this I just didn't REALIZE the importance of this to me. The red wire to the ammeter was fried in my last foray into the dash and I just gave it a cursory brush-off, greased it up and wrapped it with tape. I didn't want to take it apart because it looked like it would disintegrate. I REALIZED that this was probably my problem area when I read the pages and pages on the topic, with the alternator upgrades, shunts, half-assed wiring bypass threads (thanks Dan). So on Saturday I disconnected the battery, took the alt meter connections apart and cleaned them meticulously, gooped up with dielectric grease, and reassembled. Before this the truck was DEAD, not even a click, after it fired like it was thinking about it before I even touched the key.

I didn't do anything dumb-assed this time (that is currently obvious), just took it apart carefully and reassembled it carefully.

Lessons learned: The fat wires are real important, especially if corroded, and so hot that the insulation melts. Yes they could be stupid enough to bring the charging circuit into the cab and run it through an ammeter. Read what Dan writes and read it again if you don't understand it, and if you still don't understand it read it again. When you have an electrical problem and you see some melted wires, that is probably part or all of the problem.