electrical problem, starter perhaps?

ok let me try to explain this from the begining.
last week, out of nowhere i turn the key to start my camaro and it cranks a half a turn and then the whole power goes dead: no dome light no buzzer nothing. i jiggle the negative cable on the battery and get power once again and start up the car and im on my way. i jiggled the wire b/c i knew that it would be lose cuz i striped out the threads inside the battery from cross threading it once :banghead: but it gave me no problems up unit last week. so i get it runing and eventually get a new battery and new bolts all together and snug them up tight ( but not too tight). HORRAY ive solved my problem, or so i thought.

after i installed the new battery / new bolts it would not kill my power when i tried to start up but instead it would sound very tired as it turned the motor over, even though the batter has full juce: 12 volts.

now im back to the same problem: i tried to start it up, it turned a half a crank then killed the whole power. no battery cables are loose or anything. eventually i got the car towed home and cleaned a VERY small amt of corrosion off of the pos batery cable and now it turns over (slowly) and fires up... im scared to take it out on the streets in case it would die on me while im driving.
my dad and the tow truck driver thought its got something to do with the starter but i dont know... im stumped :shakehead

Does sound like a starter problem.. take your starter out and have an autoparts store test it. I know Autozone and O'Rielly auto do it for free.

BTW if your car dies while it's running then its most likely the alternator.

yeah could be your alt not charging the battery

check the wire that goes from the starter to the batery also. And all other wires around there. But i think on all 3ed gens it takes a little extra crank to get them started. What motor do you have? The 350 TPI??

3rd gen starters take a ton of abuse as is from heat off the exhaust.

If you were experiencing the problem before you may very well have hurt the alternator though by having a weak connection.

However, if you are loosing ALL power then you are back to a supply or ground problem.

I would guess it is either a bad starter, bad alternator or you have a bad ground wire somewhere.

thanks for all of your responses. i will definantley take that starter off and probably replace it and check all of those wires etc. your right too, it does take a beating from all of that heat, espesially since im running headers :grinno:

i dont think that it is the alternator because i have had the battery on there for a week and a half and it still is showing 12 volts when motor is off and 14 volts when motor is on: ie the alt is adding more voltage while it is spining and if it wasnt, my battery would be dead by now right? but then again, if the motor was running and you disconnected the batery, would it still run or would it die?

yes its the tpi, but its a 305.:iceslolan

Well remember to have them test it first before you start throwing money around.

EDIT- Oh and your car will continue running even with the battery off, so if you get it to start and then take off the battery, it wont die.

EDIT- Oh and your car will continue running even with the battery off, so if you get it to start and then take off the battery, it wont die.

Come again? :wtf:

Come again? :wtf:
eh ? is this not true? cuz it happend to me once last week; while i was driving it died and i could not get it to start up again untill i installed a new battery.

i will yank that starter tomorow and inspect those wires/connections and let u all know how it turns out. what about that alternator? is there a way to put a volt meter on it while its running to see how many volts/amps its putting out to see if its not functioning properly?
anyways, thanks again for all of the input:grinyes:

update:

i replaced the starter today but after i got it all bolted up and hooked up the wires, i re-connected the negative battery cable and now ive got no power at all: not even the dome light. what have i done ???

can some one answer this question for me: if those wires which connect to the starter are bad, will it cause total electric black out on the whole car?

final update:
good news!
i had missed one of the wires i connected to the starter so i hadnt hooked it up correctly, which answers my question^^^ Yes it will kill all power to the car if the starter is not properly wired. so i hooked it all up and it fired right up.:grinyes:

thanks again for the suggestions and ideas!