Total non-starter
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 79
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From: SF Bay Area, CA
Total non-starter
Latest bulletin in the endless timing belt job from hell:
The car was noisy and down on power when tested the other day, but it wasn't hard to start.
Yesterday, I went out to continue testing. No start. Tried jumping, still no start. Checked the battery, no green eye. Looks like the original 1994 factory batt, so it had a long, good life. Went out and got a new battery and swapped it in this morning.
New batt has plenty of juice, but still no start. No sound of starter engagement, no buzz, nothing. One faint click when the key is turned.
Did a fuse get cooked by the jump? I check everything that might be starter or ECU related, in both the cabin and underhood fuse boxes. Everything is A-OK. Futz. That's it for the easy fixes.
Guess I'll put a meter across the starter terminals and see if it gets voltage.
The car was noisy and down on power when tested the other day, but it wasn't hard to start.
Yesterday, I went out to continue testing. No start. Tried jumping, still no start. Checked the battery, no green eye. Looks like the original 1994 factory batt, so it had a long, good life. Went out and got a new battery and swapped it in this morning.
New batt has plenty of juice, but still no start. No sound of starter engagement, no buzz, nothing. One faint click when the key is turned.
Did a fuse get cooked by the jump? I check everything that might be starter or ECU related, in both the cabin and underhood fuse boxes. Everything is A-OK. Futz. That's it for the easy fixes.
Guess I'll put a meter across the starter terminals and see if it gets voltage.
Thread Starter
Member
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 79
Likes: 0
From: SF Bay Area, CA
Damn! Never mind.
For anyone who has the same symptom: look for a starter interrupt box.
I was sweating and cursing over the car when its owner came along. "Won't start, I'm diagnosing the starter right now," I say. "Can you go turn the key for me?"
She gets in the car and says, "Oh! Look at this! The little light is blinking again!"
The "little light" is an LED on an interrupter box under the dash, the kind that takes a removable IC key on a phono plug.
I always thought it was a cheap dummy, since the car has always started up just fine without the plug going in.
She tells me now that the system went offline in 1997 (!), the light stopped blinking, and it quit requiring the IC key in order to start -- so she just stopped carrying the key and forgot all about it.
VERY fortunately, she kept the spare key. Would have been completely up the creek without it: a tow-in to an alarm shop and probably a fat bill to de-install the system.
I will probably de-install the little mofo myself now -- if it quit working once but left the car usable, Dr. Murphy says it will probably quit again, but this time leave the car stranded out on the ass end of nowhere some rainy cold night.
So all that this little diversion has cost me is, oh, about six hours out of a really nice warm Sunday afternoon when I should have been drinking beer and enjoying the outdoors. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh...
Can you commit seppuku with a torque wrench? I'm about to try it.
For anyone who has the same symptom: look for a starter interrupt box.
I was sweating and cursing over the car when its owner came along. "Won't start, I'm diagnosing the starter right now," I say. "Can you go turn the key for me?"
She gets in the car and says, "Oh! Look at this! The little light is blinking again!"
The "little light" is an LED on an interrupter box under the dash, the kind that takes a removable IC key on a phono plug.
I always thought it was a cheap dummy, since the car has always started up just fine without the plug going in.
She tells me now that the system went offline in 1997 (!), the light stopped blinking, and it quit requiring the IC key in order to start -- so she just stopped carrying the key and forgot all about it.
VERY fortunately, she kept the spare key. Would have been completely up the creek without it: a tow-in to an alarm shop and probably a fat bill to de-install the system.
I will probably de-install the little mofo myself now -- if it quit working once but left the car usable, Dr. Murphy says it will probably quit again, but this time leave the car stranded out on the ass end of nowhere some rainy cold night.
So all that this little diversion has cost me is, oh, about six hours out of a really nice warm Sunday afternoon when I should have been drinking beer and enjoying the outdoors. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh...
Can you commit seppuku with a torque wrench? I'm about to try it.
