dixey21

Ok I have a 95 VX 5SPD that I swapped an EX motor into. I have done all the necessary rigging for the EX ECU to work properly and for the O2 sensor to work as well. Last week I parked the car on a Thursday evening, didn't need to go anywhere in it until Sunday morning when, to my dismay, it wouldn't start, it wouldn't even try, meaning the starter wasn't working. So I decided to pop it like I've done many times before. It's a light car and I can do this by myself. I figured the battery was dead or maybe the starter was bad but I'd deal with that later. After trying a few times to pop it I noticed that the normal dash lights (Oil Light, Battery Light, and Check Engine Light) weren't on when I turned the key to on and not start. The only light on was the Brake light (for the E-Brake), however, the hand brake wasn't pulled and the car was in neutral. I checked the Main Relay, the Starter Cut Out Relay, and the Clutch Switch. All these seem to be working fine. I was getting frustrated and while holding the key in the start position started kicking the clutch pedal, and for one second the normal lights came back on on the dash but just as quickly as they appeared they vanished and haven't returned since. Also, while I was ckecking out some of the wiring under the hood a friend was in the car and when I told him to try and start it I noticed that the radiator fan came on but only when the key is in the start position. I will be pulling the starter out tomorrow and getting that along with the battery checked but I wanted to know if anyone else had ever seen this whacky electrical problem. Oh yeah, would the ICU have anything to do with this since it's on of a few components that I know little about. Any information would be very helpful and I hope to have the beast running again soon, just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing all sorts of extra hunting if someone else knows whats wrong. Thanks in advance.

HellsHatchback

serrilion

Sounds more like a Dizzy to me bud!

dixey21

Well after taking the battery, starter, and alternator to Advanced for their free testing I've found that they don't know a damn thing. They said all three were bad. I thought this was mysterious considering they had all worked just days before that. Not being convinced by their prognosis I decided to do some testing. I borrowed a battery charging unit and connected it to the starter. Guess what happened. It freaking worked!! Worked like a champ too. So I got an electric drill and rigged it to the alternator using a coat hanger and some duct tape. Guess what happened. I got voltage out of the damn thing. All that time I had the battery charger on the battery and after a little while longer it shut off and said "Fully Charged". Now I don't know what they did at Advanced Auto cause I had dropped all three off went got some food and coffee and came back about 45 minutes to an hour later but either they didn't bother to actually test the stuff and were just hoping that I'd be gullible enough to believe that and buy new stuff or if they just didn't test them properly but don't take their word as final. If you can test the stuff yourself. It's not hard and it might save you from buying a lot of unneeded stuff. Aside from that after testing them while I was reinstalling them into the car I discovered (quite by accident) that the passenger side ground cable, from the tranny to the chassis was heavily frayed and corroded. Using a new piece of 4 gauge wire and a couple of crimp on ring terminals I replaced it and finished installing the other parts. Then I put back the Main Relay, the Starter Cut Out Relay and my original ECU I decided to give it a try and low and behold it fired right up. So I disconnected the ground cable again and the same symptoms I had earlier returned. So that was the whole damn problem. A week of tearing it apart, testing components and bumming rides to work for a $2 ground cable. I wouldn't have thought that that one ground cable would have caused that large of a problem but I guess so. Oh well, at least she's running. Serrilion, thank you for your reply, if it hadn't started after all that the distributor would have been my next area of interest, I am just glad I spotted the ground problem before I did.

HellsHatchback