When I turn my ignition the starter makes a loud clack sound, but nothing tunes over or fires. Then when I turn the ignition back to off, the starter makes a slightly softer clack. It was running a few weeks ago and nothing has been changed. is something stuck? do I need to replace my starter?

Z

 

reach under the car with a hammer and give the starter a few good whacks. Sometimes they get stuck and won't turn over. If that doesn't work, pull it off the car and take the cap off the solenoid and check for corrosion or bad contacts.

 

That sounds like what my battery did last week... turns out it was just dead. I charged it up, and its all good now. Try charging up your battery, or getting a boost, and see what happens.

 

I know it's not the battery, 'cause I've been changing the same one out of my daily driver into the camaro every time I want to fire it up (pain in the tuckus) and when the camaro wouldn't turn over I put it back in the driver and it fired up no problem. I'm going to go try some hammer therapy, and if that doesn't work I'll swap it out.

 

ok- couple hours later- I took the starter out, it looked ok, but I swapped the solenoid from another starter that I had and bolted it all up. Exact same thing. It sounds like the solenoid is pushing the gear out, but the starter motor isn't engaging. Does the motor fire up before the gear gets all the way out? or does it get triggered when the gear moves out and connects? I've got another complete identical starter unit that I'm going to swap in tomorrow, but could anyone tell me how they bench test thiers? As you know, they're a pain to take out and put in, and I'd like to know that I'm putting in a good one.

 

never did it myself but I would think you could test it by grounding it and provinding 12 volts on the other terminal on the solenoid.