How can you tell if a starter relay is bad, there are times when I turn the key, nothing, and times its ok....thanks

 

It could be your relay, but chances are it's your starter solenoid contacts.

Disconnect the little wire from the starter. It's a bit of a pain to disconnect the connector, but it's doable. (Don't remove the large guage wire that goes directly from the battery and is bolted to the starter solenoid. You're looking for a small 14 or 16 guage wire that connects to the starter solenoid with a clip-in connector). Once you have the connector disconnected, put the positive lead of a multimeter on the wire in the connector you just disconnected (in the connector half that's on the wire... not the connector half that is on the starter) and connect the negative lead of the multimeter to ground.

When you're set up, have somebody turn and hold the ignition to "Start" for a few seconds and see what you get for a reading on your multimeter. You should be reading close to 12V (over 11V anyways). Repeat this test several times to ensure you're consistantly getting good readings.

If you get good readings everytime, you're relay is probably fine (unless the problem is really intermittent and only happens once in a while in the first place.) Once you prove the relay is fine, order yourself some starter contact kits and pull your starter to rebuild the solenoid. Once the starter is out, it's literally only a 1/2 hour job to rebuild it.

 

Best to do that voltage test "under load". I use a little "Y" test wire to do that:
- http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTri...shtml#EasyTest

Test wire and connections shown below:


Of course the original wire from the solenoid would be connected to the bare end of the test wire and you can also do that test w/ the starter in place on the engine. The reason for doing the test under load, is to test for excessive voltage drops. If you test unloaded, you may get a "good" voltage reading unles shte relay contacts are completely burned out. Under load (the solenoid pulls around 20 amps), even a little resistance in the relay/wiring can lead to a large voltage drop.

If you are not seeing a big voltage drop, that meaks the problem is likely worn contacts inside the starter solenoid, an easy and inexpensive repair, as noted on the web page.

 

Thank you for the info, I will give this a shot this weekend!! Again, thanks...