New here, over the course of the whole COVID quarantine I did a rebuild on my ‘02 gt. I got it to start but realized that I needed to put an adjustable ball pivot stud in my trans because of the stage 3 clutch I put in it. Pulled the motor and trans again to fix this issue. In the mean time I replaced the old starter motor with a brand new one. Put everything back together and now the car won’t start. Sounds like it tries to crank but very briefly, then nothing. Could it be a bad starter motor? Ideas?
 
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Starters can be damaged before they get to the store, so bench testing the starter would be a good diagnostic step. Checking the ground, power and signal wires and the battery will probably find the issue if the starter tests OK.
 
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Starters can be damaged before they get to the store, so bench testing the starter would be a good diagnostic step. Checking the ground, power and signal wires and the battery will probably find the issue if the starter tests OK.
Appreciate the reply!! Think I have it figured out, the adjustable ball pivot stud needed to be threaded in deeper, the throwout bearing popped out of the clutch fork and is binding up.
 
That’s an unusual problem, and I am glad you found it! I figured it was most likely something that got changed, but a little mechanical piece was not on my list of suspects. I was going to ask if you could turn it over the engine by hand but thought should not be relevant. Oops. Is that how you figured out the clutch set up was binding?
 
That’s an unusual problem, and I am glad you found it! I figured it was most likely something that got changed, but a little mechanical piece was not on my list of suspects. I was going to ask if you could turn it over the engine by hand but thought should not be relevant. Oops. Is that how you figured out the clutch set up was binding?
With the dust cover off I was able to see the throwout bearing had popped out. After the rebuild, I had put a Ford OEM ball pivot in, and since I replaced the stock clutch with a stage 3, I didn’t realize, due to inexperience(first time ever doing a job like this),that I needed an adjustable one. Seems as though I had too much angle on the fork, combined with an adjustable clutch cable, that high load popped the bearing out of the fork.