Hello all, first time poster here. I'm having a starter problem that many others here seem to be having as well.
The advice given in the other threads were helpful, but havent been able to fix my problem.

I have a 95 F150 eddie bauer with a 4.9L and manual trans. I had it a since '05 but its been sitting for about 18 months.

Since the day I bought it, occasionally when I go to start it, it would click a couple of times before turning over. It would
always turn over though by the 5th try when it was my daily driver, so I thought it might have been a fault clutch switch since pumping the clutch
a few times usually did the trick. I'm pretty sure now it was just coincidence. Well I bought a brand new battery and as usual it wouldn't turn over. All I got was the usual click. I tried about 25-30 times before I gave up. Not a single crank.
I disconnected the small red wire at the fender solenenoid(or whatever that block is) and shorted the two large terminals with a screwdriver. Just a click. Nothing at the starter, just clicking from that block on the fender.
I looked under the truck and there was alot corrosion on the undercarriage and the starter was flaking all its paint off and the small wire for the switch(not battery cable) didn't look so good. It had exposed wire above the plastic connector that was mostly green. I pulled the starter out and took it to my local Autozone to test it. They said it turned over in the tester, but it was pretty noisy on the second test probably from bad bearings. I bought a rebuilt one from them and was hoping that perhaps the bearings were seized when it was on the vehicle resulting in not turning over from my truck's current. Upon opening the box on the new starter, there was a service bulletin in there explaining how there is a common issue on many f150s with corrosion on the starter wire resulting in a no cranking situation. The new starter didnt even have the stock blade to accept the old connector, instead it supplied a new ring terminal on 8in of new wire with a crimp connector and shrink tubing that was connected to a stud terminal(the OE starter only had a blade terminal) I thought "This has to be the issue" so I cut 6 inches off the end of the starter wire to spice the new wire to. The cut wirelooked like new so I spliced the new wire to it, I wire brushed both battery cable terminals that connected to the starter as well.
I finished installing and went to start it.... CLICK once, Click twice, then it started! I ran it for about 20 minutes before shutting it off. I started it up again(hot) and it turned right over.
Seems to be cranking for now, but since the first two tries were clicks, its obviously not 100% yet.
Reading through these threads, there seems to be alot of this issue especially since the rebuilt starter had a fix to the original design.

My gut feeling is there is more corrosion somewhere else. Any suggestions? Should I replace that fender block terminal? Is that a part I can get from a part store?

 

Check your ground cable. Read my response in this thread:
https://www.f150online.com/forums/pr...ting-96-a.html

 

Thanks for the reply! When payday comes, I will start replacing the ground cables. I figured it probably were the cables since they all look pretty shoddy. I just wanted to verify it wasn't something else before I start ripping wires out, lol. Thanks again!

 

Don't just replace them. Check them with an ohm meter to see if they're OK. This table gives reference values

http://www.interfacebus.com/Copper_Wire_AWG_SIze.html

For example 6 ft piece of #4 wire should only show a resistance of .0015 ohms

 

That 'block' is called a starter solenoid

 

Actually, it's properly called a relay