Thread: I need help starting up the car

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This is my situation. I got the car Thursday. It started up and died out. It started up and died out. And now there is no power through-out the car AT ALL. NO lights, horn, nothing. I changed the battery, and the fusible link. I am getting really frustated. Has anyone had this problem before or knows a possible solution. I am open to anything. It is a 63 Nova. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

You definitely have something shorted to ground. I've had an ignition switch short across the terminals( my old '40 did that) and I've had a dimmer switch do the same thing. The headlights and/or taillights can cause your type of problem. Recharge the battery and hook it back putting the ground cable on last. If it throws quite a spark pull it back off and pull all of the fuses and try it again. If it doesn't spark it's in one of your fused circuits. If you have a VOM check each circuit with the battery disconnected for a grounded circuit.

This might be a dumb question but where are the fused circuts? I know of the fuse box that is attached under the steering column which has wiper motor fuse, radio fuse, a/c fuse, Instrument and clock lamp fuse, Tail, Stop, and Dome Lamp fuse, and heater fuse. Is that the one you are talking about? If not where is it located, or where might it be located?

if everything checks out ,check your solenoid on the starter. All your power goes thru there and it sounds like you have a bad one.

On my vette I had an instance where the wiring harness that feeds the engine compartment popped loose from the fuseblock connector on the inside of the engine compartment. The connector is a crummy 1960's plastic. Finally replaced the entire harness and the problem stopped. Since your Nova and my vette are of the same genre I'd take a look.

The fuse box is what I'm refering to. The ignition and brake lights do not go through the fuse box.

What I find weird is that when i connect the battery there is no spark to show that there is power to the battery from the starter. I think it might be bigdudes theory. It might be the soliniod in the starter. What do you guys think?

I think it might be the starter solenoid becuase I just found this something about at http://novaresource.org/starter.htm . I think i might have to get a Ford solenoid so that I can relocate the soleniod. Maybe that might be the problem.