I’m getting old. Also I was a dealership mechanic many years ago, HATED it, and willfully forgot all about it when I finally had a chance to move on.
It was years before I’d so much as open an engine hood. In that time I forgot simple, common sense things that are a mechanic’s bread and butter. Things like, if you can turn the ignition switch on but can’t crank the starter, jump the solenoid.
Now, when I was very young I had some bad experiences attempting to jump starter solenoids and I’m as shy about it as a dog that’s had his paw pinched. Also the solenoid is way down there under the engine and I’m old and lazy. But if you jump the starter RELAY, things get much simpler. I like simple.
I pulled out the starter relay, which in this case should go in the upper socket of that row with only one relay in it. Jumped between the two vertical slots, and the starter cranked nicely. Turned the key to ON, did it again, and the engine started just fine.
So I’m still taking the Jeep to the shop but I don’t need to tow it to town. I’ll take it in on Monday with D&L on our regular water run.
Well that beats the hell out of yesterday’s situation. Good job!
Last time I got to play with something like this, the relay was on-board the starter. Your way is a lot better than the last time I got to do that! Good find!
Yup, that saved you a lot of tail chasing. With modern electronics it us usually something mechanical or subject to heat stress that fails, IE relays, solenoids, flashers (thermal relay or semiconductor) and bulbs. A/C was intermittent in one of my cars, thought it needed freon or had a bad sensor (or whatever passes for freon nowadays) but it turned out to be a broken solder joint on one leg of a small relay. Mechanical, heat sensitive and vibrates – all the necessary ingredients for kaput..
In this case I think it’s a problem with the ignition switch actuator but we’re going to let the shop do the diagnosis. I’m just happy to have found a way to start the damned engine.
Before you spend big bucks on diagnostics and/or replacement OEM parts…..
It’s been too many years to remember precisely, but I corrected (for various values of “corrected”) a similar problem on what was left of an old Chevy van a friend’s kids used. It was either an internal ignition switch problem or a wiring fault between the ignition switch and starter relay. Neither the kids nor the parents wanted to spend money on the wreck and if it couldn’t start the kids were doomed to the Ankle Express. The $2 fix was a pushbutton switch on the dash. IIRC, I picked up 12V from the output side of the ignition switch and ran a fresh wire from the pushbutton switch to the starter relay. Turn ignition switch to ON, push button, the junker started. I bent some 1″ wide .125″ aluminum into a square U and pop riveted it to the dash (this was back in the days of all-steel dashboards) as a button switch guard.
“The $2 fix was a pushbutton switch on the dash.”
We’re on the same page, Norm. I emailed that exact fix to Joel two days ago. Old school stuff.
🙂 🙂 🙂
I am enormously attracted to this idea.
In fact I have the wire, the wire ties, and have even traced out the path on which I’d lay the wire and the point through the bulkhead. What I don’t have is a switch. And I’ve torn the place apart, hunting through my parts drawers and powershed, hoping to find any pushbutton switch either scrounged or sent by BB at some point. I told myself that if I could find a switch I’d install the thing this very morning and from that moment on the Jeep would have a pushbutton starter – but that I would not delay taking the Jeep to the shop one more day. And I can’t find one. So I’m just afraid the ignition switch will have to be boring old repaired.
For future use, I will put together a small box of electrical goodies for you, including a momentary on dash button and some wire just in case.
No self respecting hermit should be without an electrical junk box, I mean really, whatever is the world coming to?!
🙂 And I will appreciate that.