Tonight my buddy (mainer) and i put a 3K kit and 181DV and a 215 plate into my 96 that has a 160 motor. Doing all this work went fine untill the very end when we put everything back together and tried to start the truck. The truck will run and run mint if the shutoff solenoid is held in the up position, however it wont stay in the up postion, when you let go, the rod fall back down and the truck shuts off. Everything is connected properly and the trucks shutoff solenoid functioned properly before we tore into the truck. The solenoid is new and we took it off and swung it out of the way up onto the cowl and that was it. We checked the voltage on the blue wire the fusible link that runs off the battery and there was 12vs there behind the fusible link. On the wire harness that the shutoff solenoid plugs into, there was 12vs at the red wire. We could get the solenoid to lift up when we hot wired it to the battery, but it does not do anything when its plugged into the wire harness. I was able to get home buy zip tieing the rod into the up position. We are both stumped on this, any ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks

 

One more thing, when we hot wired it to the battery, we had the black wire ground and the middle wire (yellow??) to the positive battery terminal and when we did this the plunger sucked right up like it was supposed to. Thanks

 

I would first check your grounds. There is a Black wire with a tan tracer. This grounds at the front of the cylinder head, try to trace out that wire, it goes to the shutdown solenoid. If you have power, the only thing that you could possibly be missing is ground. Hope this helps,

Harold

 

thanks i will go out and check it now

 

Well, was that it?

 

nope, not the problem, wish it was that simple, i am going to try one more other thing this morning which should tell me weather or not the seloniod is the problem. Since i can turn my key to the on position and pull up on the selonoid and nothing happens, it just falls back down, i am going to try runing power to the selonid, via the ground and red wire to simulate that the key is in the on position and try to pull up on the selenoid and see what happens, if it stays up, then i know i have wiring issue some place, if it falls back down, i can say that it is the selonoid.

 

You might have inadvertently pulled the relay loose. It is one of the square ones on the firewall, just above the area you were working in.

 

There is a fusible link (blue wire) going to battery positive on driver side that could be blown. It supplies 12v to fuel shutdown relay to power the "Pull" circuit of the fuel solenoid. It is a blue wire connected to drivers side battery and connectes to te fuel solenoid relay on firewall. It's a red/blk wire on terminal 30 of the relay.

See here:

http://www.fostertruck.com/images/st...it_diagram.jpg

http://www.fostertruck.com/images/Ram_wire_diagram.jpg


Edit: Sorry. I see you verified 12v from this fuse to the relay. The relay provides 12v thru term 87 which is a red/viloet wire. The fuel solenoid gets ground thru the blk/tan wire. The fuel relay is turned on by a Blk/tan wire from the starter

Dave

 

i once had a fusible link that would hold 12 volts for a meter or test light but when you tried to put a real load on it, it would fail, might check to see you have power with the circuit loaded if possible

 

The the relay and fusible link only come into play in the lift cycle of the solenoid.
Only times I've run into problems with the hold cycle it has been the key switch or wires pulled apart in the steering column. Both cases usually cause many other electrical circuits not to work but you don't usually notice when your main objective is to get the engine running.

 

Had the same problem when i did my gsk. Got every thing back together and started the truck and it was fine then went to shut it down and it wouldnt turn off so i did it by hand and pulled the solenoid out and cleaned it and put it back in and then it started doing the same thing thats happening to you. it ended up being the ground wire on the solenoid shorted when i went to start it because it got worked loose. good luck finding the ploblem.

 

When my 97' did this, the solenoid wouldn't move when the key was turned on, and the truck cranked over, but would not start. If you turned the key on, and manually opened the solenoid, it would stay open and the truck would crank and run until you turned the key off. To restart, manually open solenoid. The solenoid has two coils in it; the pull-in coil and the hold-in coil. Either can fail and not affect the operation of the other. If cleaning and retightening ground doesn't solve the problem, change relay. I changed relay, solved problem. Good Luck.