My starter is not cranking the engine over can you help me?

Look for the under-hood fuse box. There should be a fat red wire feeding it that is bolted to its terminal. Make sure that connection is clean and tight. There may also be a large fuse that is bolted in. Check that those bolts are tight.

These guides can help us fix it

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/starter-not-working-repair

and

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/car-battery-load-test

Please run down these guides and report back.

Less commonly, the large terminal on the starter relay is used as a tie point for other circuits. Be sure that soft copper nut is tight. These are all common failures. Be careful with your tools that they never touch a terminal and the body sheet metal at the same time or you will see fireworks.

Your dandy observation of all the lights and other circuits going out is the symptom, but I am pretty sure the cause lies in the high-current battery cables and connections. Activating the starter makes it try to draw its really high current, and that makes the bad connection show up.

Turn the head lights on so you have something to watch. If it is as you described, they will go off when you try to crank the engine. Now, with the defect acting up, use a test light grounded to the battery's negative cable, and probe where the large cable bolts to the under-hood fuse box. (Head lights have not come back on yet). If you find low or no voltage at the fuse box, there is a break in that circuit. The diagram shows a large 175 amp fuse mounted separately outside that fuse box, so that is another location to find a bad connection. Also, to be accurate, this test is including the mechanical connection between the battery's negative post and that cable clamp too, so if you find 0 volts at the fuse box, move the meter's negative probe from the negative cable clamp and hold it right on the battery's negative post. We are looking for the first place, as you move further from the battery, where voltage drops significantly.

If you do have full battery voltage at the fuse box, move the meter's negative probe from the battery cable to a paint-free point on the body. Now, if you find low or no voltage, that smaller negative battery wire has a break in it. This is a less-likely suspect because it handles all the current for the rest of the truck except the starter circuit, and it appears to be the starter circuit that initiating the problem.

This type of test is only accurate and valid when current is trying to flow through the circuit. That is why you must leave the head lights turned on. This is like putting two pressure gauges a half inch apart on a garden hose. Obviously they should read the same pressure, but what if they do not? If there is a restriction between the two gauges, they still read the same, until you try to run water through that restriction. That is when the different pressures will show up, and it is those different pressures that show the location of the restriction/bad connection.

Hello,

To me it sounds like you need a new positive battery cable which can be internally corroded. Here is a guide to help you see what I am talking about:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/everything-goes-dead-when-engine-is-cranked

Please run down this guide and report back.

Cheers, Ken