help!!

[silverstreakin]

i have a toyota land cruiser prado. i have no clue at the year. im thinking its a 90s at least. it has no vin, but i did manage to get some numbers off of it. y-kzj78w-pgt its a 3.0 turbo deisel. im having problems trying to get it started and im not sure why. it came to me with dead batteries and a very modded ignition setup. it is pretty much back to normal, but i cant get it to turn over. i can hear a relay clicking, but no starter. the very first time i tried to crank it, it rotated slowly, and since then, it hasnt done anything at all. i can get another starter if i need to, but it wont be easy. just so you know, this is a right hand drive too.

and to give you some background, its a vehicle that has been "acquired" by me at a deployed location. i have another donor vehicle for just a little while longer, if i dont get it running soon it will dissappear. any help you can give is much appreciated i can use all you can give. thanks much all

[Chuck_Sirloin]

It may be that the contacts in the starter are just worn down. That happened to mine. I was able to replace the contacts for 13 bucks vs a whole new starter. I am not sure what the starters are like for the land cruiser, but my 22RE was a pretty easy fix. What happens is that the battery side contact gets a groove worn into it from the solenoid. I found some pretty complete instructions on the web for it, but again, its for the 22RE.

[rezzle]

This is going to sound silly,

If you can, get your nose close to the starter to give it a sniff and see if it is fried, you'll know if you smell it.

If you can't you are going to have to pull it to see if its cooked, probably is. When you start a car with a weak battery, the starter doesn't spin fast enough to create 'inductive reactance' in the motor windings. Basically it means that a whole shitload of current is going through and if the starter is run too long its toast. Then once it cools there may be a couple of seconds left in it depending of how the wires melt together.

Also, if you have the tools available, see if you can't get a wrench on the crank pully and see if you can move the motor by hand. (just to make sure the motor isn't siezed)

[silverstreakin]

yeah...it was the solenoid. im in process of swapping it out with another. hopefully it all will work out. itd be nice to have such a nice vehicle here. ac owns you in the desert.

[2.4LTDI]

Your starter probably doesn't have the juice it needs to turn that engine. I have a 2.4 turbo diesel (87') when it came to me it turned slow, used up batts fast. Had rebuilt by local shop. Still didn't turn fast enough even with tractor batts. Found spare through old friend. Bench fired good so threw it in and started. Must have enough torque and speed otherwise no go and dead batts . Try that