OK, me and a few mates pulled my daily driver nugget vl apart to replace the auto and a few other bits and peices. So we had the motor out in the process. Now, when we went to start the car after it all being back together we got nowhere. When we hit the ignition, we get 1 loud clunk and thats it. The solenoid engages, but the starter motor itself dont do ****. It worked fine before, but now wont. So we then got one off a mates VL which was wrecking, also did work... tried that one and same thing. Its definatly not the battery either as its new and we are also using a jump pack. On the solenoid, there are 2 power posts... one for power from the battery (the side away from the motor) and the other one ios supposed to output power to the starter when the ignition is triggerd. Well it doesent. Put a testlight on the second power post (the one closest to the motor) and when I crank the car, it doesnt light up. The solenoid is not passing the current to the starter motor. WTF!!!!!!!!! 2 that were working did the same thing!!!!! No even more interesting, before we put the second one in, we tested it on the bench and got the solenoid to activate and spin up the starter just like it should... just wont do it in the car.. Im stuffed, I have no idea.. every seems good.. good earth, good power.. Any ideas??

sounds electrical like maybe a poor earth

Dont think it is... all earth straps are on and secured.. seems to have plenty of juice to activate the solenoid... but that damn starter motor just wont do anything.. arrrrggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg

did you bridge the starter manualy to test it? with it all hooked up, just take the red wire off the trigger and bridge from the power to the terminal the red wire was on with a screw driver. If it still only goes CLUNK then its either the battery/the starter. Can you manualy turn the engine over? Put a socket on the crank bolt and make sure it is still able to spin too!

Ok, got a little further tonight.. it has nothing to do with the starter motor... I tried to bar the motor over and it was impossible... it seemed the flexplate was hard up against the motor block and was not going to budge. So we took the motor back out, pulled the torque converter out.. re seated it all. Put it all back together and still no go. Why the hell is it doing this? Anybody else ever had this with their VL?

yeah man you didnt line up the converter with the pump gear. you have shagged the converter neck and possibly the pump gear in the box. sorry to be the bearer of bad news,but ive done that myself

oooo bugger... ok, well I can get another converter.. but a box will be a pain.. Actually, the gearbox is the one I got off you leigh that you had lying around... its taken awhile for the old one to fully die.. but it got there!

duz360 is right, they wernt lined up and yeah....

if you rip the front oil seal out you can see the pump gear and decide if its ok to just swap converters and run it