Could this be a starter problem?

The starter is not where I would look at first. It really sounds like a primary side electrical issue. Cables often rot from the inside out - I'd consider renewing the positive battery cable, neg cable and adding an extra motor ground.

I have used a jumper cable in parallel with existing cables to find the deficient one. It is very often the negative battery cable or connection.

Random thoughts.

Good luck.

I'd route the new cables to the same locations as they are originally. Before you spend money on cables, the 'parallel' part can help narrow things down perhaps.

Grab a jumper cable (just one cable - with an aligator clip on each end).

To test my battery ground cable: I put the jumper on my negative battery cable at the terminal and on the engine. Now if the car magically starts from just doing that, I know that the cable I'm paralleling (neg cable) is deficient.

You can do the same thing (albeit very carefully, being worried about a short) with the positive cable. A jump from the positive battery cable to the battery lug of the solenoid works.

You can also parallel your starter cable (from the starter lug on the solenoid to the starter itself).

This is kind of a cheater way of pretending to replace each cable without having to do so.

One more note: I have used just the aligator clip on a jumper cable to test a battery post to battery terminal connection. Just using one jaw: I open the aligator jaw and put one half on the actual battery post and the other half of the jaw on the metal part of the battery cable. If the car magically starts now, you know that you probably have a bad battery connection (power is going through the aligator clip instead of trying to go through the crappy battery connection).

This can really narrow things down so you only need to replace one cable, or really really clean-up one connection. It all takes about 5 minutes.

I hope that kinda made sense.

Good luck.

if you pulled the little wire off the solenoid, and it kept cranking, then the solenoid is bad. it is easy to ruin solenoids by having bad battery cables. the battery cables will drop voltage (like 12 volts in, 10 volts out, for example). the lower voltage means the starter will draw more amps (like 300 instead of 200, for example). this will put more electrical stress on the starter, battery, and solenoid. sometimes the solenoid will weld itself together.

I'd agree about the solenoid. Been there and done that on other vehicles. I'd ensure the battery has a full charge (I should have stated that in my last post as it's the basis for the other tests being valid in the first place).

You will likely have to swap the solenoid out for another.

Good luck.

Sounds good. Your solenoid is latched - it will likely keep doing what it's doing (I had a sport bike solenoid do that too).

Some of the parts store solenoids don't seem to hold up too well (if that's what you have).

Good luck.

The Ford solenoids do seem to hold up a bit better. Since waiting for something to arrive from an online vendor might not be feasible, another parts-store solenoid might have to suffice (hopefully with a warranty of some sort. ). I honestly don't know what a local dealership charges.

Even if using a parts store unit, I'd still inquire about a Ford unit in case the newest one fails. The online savings might pay for a parts store solenoid anyhow.

I usually go to napa and get one that is rated for continous duty. They will last much longer than the standard one. Napa has a book with all of their electrical components in it. Just go through until you find one that is rated for 12 volts continous duty and has the connections you need. Here is one for example: http://www.napaonline.com/MasterPag...54140&Description=Solenoid+Switch+-+Universal