Hijacker wrote:Things that could be wrong:
Bad battery. These cars don't have a battery protection fuse like newer cars do, so when you short out a direct connected cable, it can possibly short out a plate inside the battery
Burned cable. A burned through insulation could be making contact with something it shouldn't, dragging the system down.
An easy check on the battery is to take a DMM to the terminals and see what you get. Typically, you should see around 12.5 V with the vehicle off. If you see less, then you have some plates that decided to fuse together, and you've lost the volts those plates offered. If you have sufficient voltage, have someone crank the car and check what the voltage sags to. If it goes way low, then you know something is dragging the system and keeping the start from cranking properly.
I've now got the car to crank, but after about 5 seconds of cranking it stops and won't do anything but click once until I leave it sit for a few minutes. The battery is brand new, I've checked voltage and it's good. Thinking it may be the ignition I wired a push-start button and I still just get cranking for about 5 seconds, then nothing. I checked the voltage to the starter with the key on and got a solid 12.5 volts. Really starting to feel lost here haha. I haven't checked voltage while the car is cranking so I'll see how that works out