300-6 having a hard time starting: is this normal?

[motzingg]

I've been getting a chance to put some more miles on my 300 after getting things sorted out, and I'm noticing that if the truck sits a little while or takes a couple tries to fire up, the starter
a) drains the battery REALLY fast when cranking
b) won't catch on 'low' voltages below 11v or so

The battery appears to be good, but i'm not 100% sure on that. It seems like the starter either takes a ton of power when it is cranking, or requires a ton of voltage to kick over. Jumping it with the car fires it off instantly.

The starter will crank for about 10 seconds in one shot, but if i hit it for 3 or more seconds and try to hit it again, nothing.

This looks like either a close to original starter or a very old replacement. Is this normal for an old starter? I've also replaced the starter wire but the ground cable is old (albeit very heavy gauge and in good shape) i'm not noticing any abnormal heat at the connectors.

[guhfluh]

Sounds like the battery or battery connections, and possibly ground cable depending on how you jump it. Because jumping it off with another power source fires it instantly, it eliminates your starter and power wiring from the equation.

If you jumped it off with the ground cable hooked to your engine block, it can point to a bad ground. If you jumped it straight to the battery on both pos and neg terminals, it eliminates the ground cable, but battery terminal connections could still be a problem.

My truck would act similar to yours, but if I waited for a while it would turn over fast again. The battery died shortly after, and since all of my cables were showing their innards, I replaced them at the same time. Afterwards it acted much better, but since I had a carb flooding issue, I still had to crank it quite a bit. The starter would still get hot and after a few seconds of straight cranking, would require a cool down before it would turn over fast again. I just replaced the starter a few days ago with a new style '92-up PMGR starter and hopefully don't have to worry about any more starting issues. The carb is still flooding over after a hot shutdown, even after rebuild, but that's another issue... I believe my original starter would still be just fine if only required to start a good running truck.

Check your battery voltage when cranking and after also, It will give an indication of its health.

[motzingg]

all good things there!

its probably, as i assumed, a combination of things. I've also noticed if i jump the switched terminal of the solenoid i can get another crank out of that, after the point where the key wont catch. perhaps the key switch is also getting weak.

[guhfluh]

Still sounds like a dead battery. There is a voltage drop from the battery, to the switch and back to the solenoid. Bypassing the switch bypasses the voltage drop and allows the solenoid to be switched by the slightly higher voltage from the jumper. The voltage(and amperage) is simply too low from the battery. I doubt the ignition switch has a problem.