Funny how people on the internet with a trained eye can see better than you can... thanks bronco u were totally right. Now to wait for the morning to see if it works!
You're certainly welcome. I do know that they can fail, but these seems to be extremely reliable. When I was replacing these engines for a living, I almost never replaced a solenoid on a 6.9/7.3. The 6.2/6.5 Chevys, on the other hand, it seemed like at least 20% of those were bad. All you need to do is to turn on the ignition and see if the plunger kicks out. If you can't tell for sure, work the throttle arm on the side of the pump by hand. It should kick out and hold the arm slightly away from it's resting position. If it doesn't work, check to see if it has power. If it doesn't, it's probably the switch which is on the passenger's side head, right underneath the thermostat housing. Check for power on both wires on this switch. With the key on, both wires should have power. If not, try to wiggle the plug or unplug it and plug it back in a few times. Sometimes, you can have a bad connection here and this will clean some crud off of the terminals on the switch. If that doesn't work, check for continuity through the switch. You should have continuity between the two spades on the switch when the engine is cold. If there isn't any, then the switch is bad. If you have to replace it, you'll need to drain some antifreeze from the radiator, otherwise, you'll have a mess when you remove the switch. You don't need to remove the thermostat housing in order to replace the switch unless you want to. I'll take a shallow 3/8" drive 7/8" socket (a deep one won't work)on a long extension and drive it onto the switch. You'll bend or break off the prongs on the switch, but it's bad anyway so who cares? If there isn't power to the solenoid, you can also run a jumper wire from battery positive to the spade on the solenoid. Hope this helps.
