I am writting on behalf of my dad. He's got a 1996 3/4T with the cummins of course. This morning he went out to start his truck. Ambient air temp was right around freezing. Truck started OK. Then a few mins later he needed to shut it off, truck would not shutt off. He even removed the key and the engine remained running. After about 30 sec or so the engine shut down. Then it was hard starting. Took about 4 trys with with the ignition switch before it finally ran. They proceeded to let the truck fully warm up. Did their errands around town, then drove it straight to the Dodge dealership. (Mistake!) Anyway, the dealer can find nothing wrong with the truck now. They are holding it over night to try another cold start in the am and see if they get the same symptoms.

My first impression upon hearing the story was that the fuel shut off electical system is at fault. Either a bad solenoid, relay, broken wire, what have you. Anyone have any comments? I get the feeling my dad is going to pay several hundred dollars to the dealership, for what I can lean here by just investing some time.

I work at a Caterpillar dealership, parts guy. I'm around diesel engines every day, just not Dodge products.

Keith

 

Actually, your guesses are spot on. It could be any of those three things.

First I'd try replacing the Fuel Shutoff relay in the relay box. Likely that will solve it... but in my case it only solved the problem for a short time (few hours) because I had other problems.

Your fuel shutoff solenoid could possibly be bad, but its a pricey part, so replace that as a last resort.

Finally, you could have a bad fuse in your blue power wire coming off of the driver's side battery. That was my problem. I went through 3 solenoids and lots of other things to try to solve my problem when I could have avoided it all by buying a 40 cent fuse.

The dealers could never find a thing wrong other than the obvious...

If it won't start again, you can turn the key to "ON" and then get out and manually push the solenoid plunger up to make way for the fuel. Then it will start right up. Lots of guys on here don't even bother fixing this type of problem they just install manual pull cables.

 

Your starter contacts are shot and sticking energizing the solenoid lift up coil. You're very lucky the engine didn't continue running longer than it did or the $200 shutdown solenoid would have fried. Buy new $20 contacts here> http://www.fostertruck.com/dodge/default.htm (read the Frequently Asked starter Questions for explanation of what's happening)

If the dealer lucks out and figures what's wrong they will likely replace the entire starter and charge over $300.

In the meantime carry the tools needed to disconnect the battery terminals if it should happen again. You don't want the engine to run on for more than a minute or so.

 

infidel you are the man! You diagnosed the problem dead on. I took your advise and ordered the starter repair kit from Tacoma, as well as a spare fuel shut-off relay. The parts arrived here today. Tore out the starter and pulled the cover off. Sure enough the contact were wore right down on the one side. I put it all back together and works perfect. Thanks alot for your help. You saved me a ton of $$$.

Remember I said my dad took the truck to the Dodge dealer to diagnose the problem? They couldn't find anything wrong with the truck. As with most starter problems, the symptoms are intermittent. I told my dad to go get his truck back, pay the 1 hour labour charge and we'll get 'er all fixed up. The dealer has no idea that this is happening to the starters. Their answer was that unless they could repeat the problem it would be almost impossible to diagnose. That's true I suppose if you have no idea why the fuel system solenoid was sticking open.

A reman starter from the dealer was $700 canadian plus labor.
Here's another funny story, my dad's buddie had the same problem, his truck wouldn't shut off. About a month ago. He had a lot of smoke come out from under the hood. He claimed there was a fire. Well we all know now that the solenoid stuck open and got so hot from all the amperage, that it burned right up and did catch fire. He too took his truck to the dodge dealer and they replaced the shut-off solenoid! They did nothing about the starter contacts. There's another fire waiting to ignite. There's a classic example of fixing the symptoms and not the cause. Obviously there are a lot of dealers out there that have no idea about this problem.

Thanks again.

Keith

 

If the dealers took 10 minutes to look up this page, they would be hero's instead of zero's.

Good call Infidel!!!

 

Anymore dealer "mechanics" can't diagnose anything that the shop computer doesn't tell them to.

Glad you got it going!

 

Ain't that the truth. My TC has been slipping and the whole thing has been shifting wierd for about 1 year now. Dealer said there's no codes in the computer so they can't do anything about it. And when a 19 year old starts to explain to them that it's probably mechanical and electrical, they get all ticked off. Oh well. Dodge lost a future customer cause of the way they have treated me.

 

umm can someone give me the thread to this cable to manually pull the solenoid plunger up?? sounds like an interesting lil fix when its freezin outside

 

I would be interested in seeing a write-up of the cable control for this solenoid problem. I'm working on a starting problem on my '97 5.9. It failed to start yesterday after being shut off when I got back from a trip to town. It's blowing the 40 amp "Ign/run" fuse. I've just removed the starter and will open it up tonight to inspect. I hope it's the contacts discussed above...
I sure appreciate all the input on this forum. I've used Mercedesshop for a few years but I'm new to this group.
Steve

 

97, you might want to start a new thread over in the 12 valve forum to get more response. I'm sure a lot others would be interested too.