Afternoon all,

I recently made a trip to visit family and when I was going to leave my truck would not start. It was clicking like the battery was dead but I did not think that was the case because i recently replaced the battery and alternator.

I eventually fought through it because I knew my starter was going bad, truck started, i got it home with a brief scare just outside of town to fuel up.
Today my father and I replaced the starter since i knew it needed to go anyway, we bought a replacement starter with the solenoid attached from a local autozone and hooked it up no problem, we went to start it, and it fired right up. I moved it from the back of the parking lot to the front of my apartment and shut it off after letting it run for around 10 15 minutes.

After that brief time, it would not start. the red security(?) light on the dash is flashing when we go to start, i can hear one of the fuzes(?) or relays(?) in the kick panel on the passenger floorboard click when i go to start it and the instruments stopped lighting up.
attempted to reset the security since i figured i might have tripped something after replacing the starter, but no dice.

Eventually after multiple attempts the fuze in the kick panel stopped clicking, we swapped the blower relay and the starter relay in the main fuze box to see if that was it, but no dice there either.
I'm thinking i may have screwed up the ground cable from the starter in some way but i'm not totally sure.

Any advice or suggestions would be super helpful.

Truck is an '04 3.0 V6.
Thanks all.

 

Welcome to the forum

Flashing THEFT light with key on means PATS(passive anti-theft system) has disable starter motor and fuel system
There is NO RESET for this

Turn key on, if THEFT light is flashing leave key on, wait 45 to 60 seconds and THEFT light will start to Flash a 2 digit code number, 11 to 16
11 Transceiver [transponder coil] not connected, or there is no power to it.
12 Transceiver internal fault.
13 No Key/no PATS key has been used to turn the ignition switch.
14 Incomplete key code received.
15 Invalid key code received.
16 CAN communications error.

You will see it, and it repeats several times
one flash, short pause, 1 to 6 flashes, longer pause, repeat


Just a heads up, if you try to start engine 4 times and get Flashing THEFT light each time then PATS will go into LOCKDOWN, so no start is possible for the next 90minutes, even if you have fixed a problem
Unhooking battery doesn't help, just resets the 90min timer so you have to wait longer
Point of the system is to prevent theft, so after 4 attempts it "thinks" thieves are tampering with the system, so LOCKDOWN

The Transceiver is the Loop Antenna around the ignition key slot, has 4 wires
Common failure and not hard to replace, and no reprogramming is needed after replacing
But GET THE CODE first