1981 No Start Condition

[James W.]

My cousin who lives in Modesto, CA. has a 1981 Corvette that will not start. He installed a new battery today, the car started once and now it will not start. All the interior/exterior lights work but when he turns the ignition key to start the car he gets no response, not even a click. I do not know much about this vintage of Corvette, he tells me it is the first year to have an ECM module and last year for carburetion. I told him I'd run this by the TDB members to see if anyone had any troubleshooting tips.


Thanks in advance.

James West
Omaha, NE.

[William C.]

Re: 1981 No Start Condition

Check battery voltage and connections. New Battery may be defective or he has a problem with the battery cables for starters...Does he have interior lights? should be fairly obvious.

[Tom B.]

Re: 1981 No Start Condition

Agree. If it started once and now won't even click it must be a connection or the battery. The ECM on these cars didn't do much, just carb settings and timing. It has nothing to do with weather the engine will crank over or not.

Tom

[Steve G.]

Re: 1981 No Start Condition

A first quick and easy is to tap the body of the starter with a hammer. If the brushes are worn or hanging up the solenoid won't click because it grounds through the starter brushes. If it cranks after tapping, pull and o'haul the starter. If it still doesn't crank take a jumper wire and jump between the large batt terminal on the starter solenoid and the small terminal beside it, nearest the block. If it cranks when jumped at the solenoid, you have a problem in neutral safety switch (clutch switch), ignition switch or the wiring connections in between. Get out your circuit tester and wiring diagram and isolate the issue.

If it does not crank jumping the starter terminals you have narrowed it down to three things, starter, battery, or battery cable/connections. I have a carbon pile tester so I simply load test from the starter end of the the pos cable and grpund to the frame. If it load tests properly, it's starter. If it doesn't load test properly I clip on tp the batt and load test there. If batt load tests ok, cable issue.

If you don't have access to a proper load tester booster cables and a batt of known quality can be used by placing them into the system at the batt end to test batt and starter end to test starter.

Steve

[William H.]

Re: 1981 No Start Condition

81 is first year for Anti theft that will block the starter from running. He needs to get a factory serviuce manual for that year and use it. ALso I think there were a lot of running changes that year as the car moved to bowling green. Mine does not match the serie manual at all sort of a cross between the 80 and 81 so I have both.
Hope this helps
Bill

[Jim T.]

Re: 1981 No Start Condition

My co-worker owns a 1981 Corvette he bought new that was built in St Louis and has lacquer paint, he has not driven or started it in about 15 years. Stored inside and covered.

[James W.]

Re: 1981 No Start Condition

Thanks to all of you who replied. William was correct about the anti-theft. I spoke with my cousin this evening and it was the anti-theft deterrent blocking power to the starter. He does have the service manual and went by process elimination and found the problem.


Thanks again for your help.

James West