Hey folks. Been having some trouble lately. Let me break down what I did, and then what my issues are.
My battery tray had rotted completely away from the support bracket, so I took the battery tray out, fabricated a new base and put it back in. Did no welding while anything was attached to the vehicle.
My side post terminals had very heavy corrosion, so I opted to replace them with regular top post terminals. Very simple job, got it and the battery tray done in an afternoon and felt good about it.
Then I try starting the van so I can drive it home from my shop, and it just cranks and cranks, no start. I then start searching through my grounds, using a file to freshen up the contact points where they bolt to the body and frame. No change. I then replace my entire negative lead that attaches to the battery, as it was very corroded inside. No change. Finally I caved, dropped the fuel tank and put in a new fuel pump, and golly gee what do you know. Didn’t change a thing.
I’ve been testing wires now and it looks like the active power wire on the fuel pump harness is only getting 8v max. This leads me back to thinking it’s a ground issue somewhere. I’ve spent so many hours trying to track this and I’m very close to just throwing money at someone with more knowledge.
I’ll also add that my throttle body injectors are actuating on crank, but no fuel is coming out. Filter is clean and no fuses are popped.
TDLR: van ran perfectly, replaced my battery and now have a crank but no start issue. Replaced ground lead, fuel pump, and fuel pump relay to no avail. I can’t help but think I’m missing something super simple, I don’t know how I could’ve caused this by replacing a battery and terminals.
UPDATE: alright. I ran a wire from my battery all the way back to my fuel pump plug, stuffed the wire into the active plug, stuffed another wire into the ground plug and grounded it and my pump kicked on right away. I ran it for about 3 seconds to get some fuel pressure, plugged everything back in the way it goes and now it starts and runs fine. I have no idea why that fixed it or what actually happened. It’s like the fuel system just needed woken up. Thanks for all of the recommendations, I’m going to continue researching to try to understand why this happened.