Toyota Truck No Lights – Engine Wont Start Sometimes

Reader Question Sir,

I am currently deployed overseas and my wife ran into a problem with our 86 Toyota pickup. It has the V-6 engine in it. The problem started when she went to go home one evening and it would not start… she had a friend take a look at it and he cleaned off the battery terminals because they had some slight corrosion. The truck started right up.

The next day she got into the truck and it would not start again, she said it acted like the battery was dead. No lights or anything indicating on the dash… I told her to have some one check to see if we had a bad ground. For some reason there was slight voltage going to the negative battery terminal which seemed odd.

I had her take the battery in just in case to make sure it was not a bad battery and it checked good. When she put the battery back in she said it started fine. A couple of weeks went by and when she had picked up the kids from school it did it again. She left it at the school and returned the next day where she had a friend again check all the fuses which seemed fine.

After he had checked them he got in and it started like nothing was wrong. So far she has had the battery checked, the starter and solenoid, the alternator for positive charge, and the wiring that is exposed for loose, broken and corroded ends, and she had the alarm system disconnected and radio removed to make sure they were not draining the battery.

I’m leaning toward the ignition switch at this point… it is hard to troubleshoot when your so far away from home and I can not see everything that is going on… and I’m running out of ideas. I don’t want her to be stranded again… what do you think? Thank you for you time…

Wade

Hey there Wade

I’m scratching my head a little bit as well. If this was happening to me, I would replace the battery FIRST before I did anything else. I have seen batteries do strange things like this before…start one day but not the next.

I would also would TRIPLE check the battery cable connections. It seems odd that the engine started after the battery was removed and then re-installed. To me, this would indicate a bad battery or a bad/loose connection at the battery.

You COULD have something more complex wrong, like an ignition switch problem, but replace the battery first and see what happens.

Keep me posted will ya?

Blessings,

Austin Davis