truck won't start in cold

[fenrisx]

My father-in-law has a mid-late 90's Ford F150, and here lately his truck won't start when it's pretty cold out (15f and colder). We have to jump him off. It's only when it's cold out that it does this. He just had a battery put in yesterday, and then it did it again this morning.

I will say it was his boss's friend/mechanic who put the battery in. My father-in-law said he jut brought it out of his house.. so who knows if it was new (it didn't looked used), or the right battery.. but the old one was doing this too and it was only about 3 years old.

What else could it be? Alternator perhaps?

[Robinhood4x4]

Any weak connection could cause these symptoms. Obviously, at colder temperatures the battery is a little weaker, but if there is a loose wire anywhere along the way that could be enough to keep the starter from turning over.

Check the wires from the battery to the starter, to the ground. If that all checks out, it might be the contacts for the starter, just like in high mileage toyotas.

[fenrisx]

Thanks for the info. I was curious to know if the starter could be the problem. I don't know a whole lot, and just assumed that if it was the starter then it would probably still not start when we jumped him off.

I'll give the wires a look..

[Robinhood4x4]

When the start contacts wear down, the conductivity is worse so the starter can't get enough power to turn over, but yet it can still click or sluggishly turn over. Same thing with loose contacts. When you jump the battery, you are supplying a little more power so this overcomes the higher resistance of the bad contact.

[MTL_4runner]

If the truck only does this when it's cold and turns over fine in warmer weather, then I'd also suggest the starter as the most likely culprit. It's probably either the starter solenoid or the contacts causing this. I'd just remove it and have it rebuilt by an auto-eletric shop nearby for relatively cheap money.

[CJM]

1) check the Intake Air Temperature Sensor and 2) the Idle Air Control Valve on the truck

[fenrisx]

Well, on the 13th I relayed the info about the starter to my father-in-law. He was taking it back, again, to that guy. He said he would mention it to him, and see what he thinks. I'm guessing the guy didn't think it was that at all. He said that he found a fire within the ignition switch that he thought was doing something, causing the battery to drain some over night. So he said that he rewired the ignition switch, and the problem should be fixed. Obviously, that wasn't the case because the next morning the truck wouldn't start without a jump.

So he took it back again.. this time the guys got shit rigged up. I don't think he knows what's going on. I haven't seen, and my wife tried to tell me what her dad told her he did(said she couldn't remember exactly what he said).. Something about he's got the jumpers cables rigged up inside the engine bay and tied down with bungie cords.. and wanting me father-in-law to unhook the battery at night. Well, it still didn't start this morning. He couldn't get a jump because the guy has the cables rigged up for something else.

The way I understand it is.. the truck is in my father-in-law's bosses name because he signed on the loan, but my father-in-law made the payments. Then his boss pays for any repairs since they used as the work truck. So, his boss was trying to save some money by having a guy that rents from him do the repair this time. And obviously the guy doesn't know what he is doing and is probably just trying to get more and more money knocked off his rent for labor chargers. That's just my guess.. If it weren't for my father-in-laws boss trying to save some pennies, my father-in-law would have just taken it to the shop that usually does the work on it & probably have had a working truck at this point.