Electric Gremlins

Ugh. Time to try and figure out what’s going on with the starter on the FX. A while back I was having chronic hot start problems, or so I thought. Went through a bit of work to put new starter on the opposite side of the engine away from the exhaust. Seems to have been okay for a while, but a couple weeks back I had yet another instance of non-start with hot engine. Popping the hood and waiting for twenty minutes or so seemed to fix it. Then a couple days ago it happened in the morning with totally cold engine. WTF? I twidled with some of the wiring in the engine bay. It eventually started and I drove to work. Didn’t have problems with it throughout the day, then in the evening after hanging out at Collector Maniac the boys were going to eat at FTP tiki burgers at Ala Moana. Damn it, the starter won’t go. Tried popping hood and let things cool more, twidled with wiring, noticed the starter solenoid wire has a rat bite in it, but all to no avail. Luckily I was parallel parked on the street pointing downhill, so just letting the brake out let me easily roll into the street and gain momentum to do a bump start. Phoned the boys I would be heading straight home.

I get home and shut off the car. For s-n-g, I try to start the car, no problems. Sheesh. I poke around in the dark trying to find the starter relay. I look it up in my factory service manual and can’t find it where they say it is. WTF again? Damn it, I’m going to eat and go to sleep and ignore this problem for today.

Wake up, it’s Friday morning. I chance it and the FX starts up and I take it to work. No problems throughout the day.

So here I am late Saturday morning, looking at the mass of wiring looms I had saved from the original FX. I’m contemplating swaping in the looms as the newest FX’s wiring has got a bunch of questionable wiring aside from the starter. I finally find the starter relay, it’s on the opposite side that the manual said. Sheesh. Well, it’s not the first time I’ve found an error in the FSM. I look at the wiring diagrams and manual. Wierd, the automatic tranny has no relay, and the relay in the manual doesn’t do what I would expect of a relay. I thought there would be low current running through the ignition key switch to the relay, which would trigger the higher current for the starter solenoid. Turns out the relay is just for the clutch safety interlock. Seeing as previous owner somewhere along the line has bypassed the clutch safety, this relay is entirely superfluous, so jumpering it would eliminate that as a source of problems. I think I’ll do that for now. Hopefully that’ll chase the gremlins away!