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No Starter Signal After Surgery!?

851 Views 1 Reply 1 Participant Last post by  junglejustice
So, major surgery here - I know - and now comes the hard part...

Complete engine R&R, tranny replacement, everything – sub-frame out - all back together, but now there's no signal to the starter! No click - nothing. Converted from an automatic tranny to a manual. So, a few questions;

1) Typically when I have had the battery disconnected on any of my 24 valve cars, as soon as you go and reconnect the battery power, the door-locks will kind of "cycle" but it is all an "open" signal - no alarm/disable function kicking in or anything - no attempt to lock the doors, no need to do anything - just restart the car as usual.

It does not seem to do that now.

With everything disconnected and now reconnected, how can I be sure that I am not fighting some security starter-disable function here!? The remote does not lock or unlock the doors! The little light on the key-remote works, but nothing on the door-locks!

2) The power-post up on the firewall on the left - driver - side; I now always have power to everything there - even with the key turned off (on the front AND on the back of the false fire-wall!) Is that the way that it is on these cars?

3) Where do I even start to trace signal from the ignition? When you hit the start-position on the key - where can I go as a first starting point to go and look and see if the signal even makes it part of the way to the starter?

4) I removed the automatic control-unit and harness, is it the park-start safety signal that is stuffing me around now? There was one or two leads from the auto tranny harness that had to be unplugged from the engine ECU harness - does the **** thing now think that it is not in "Park" and the ECU won't put power through to the starter?

Where do I go to over-ride that!? The manual talks about a starter motor inhibitor relay " i 10 " where's that? There is one relay that came out with the auto tranny harness - used to be located under the dash on the passenger - right - side

Dash works, lights, radio, a/c fan - everything is pretty normal right now - all except the door remote.
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So, there is a 14-pin connector that plugs in from the automatic control unit harness (now removed for the conversio to manual) in to the main engine ECU harness (right there to the right of the dash on the passenger-side foot-well side of the center console!)

It has a grey wire with a black stripe coming out of the ECU side and that grey and black wire has to be grounded. That ground completes the circuit for relay number "i 10" located under the dash on the driver-side, by the driver's right knee. The relay has a purple, a black, a grey with black stripe and a red wire coming in to it.

That relay passes power through (on an automatic car any way), to the starter IF the gear selector is in "P" for Park...

Now I had the car fire right up, but it is running rough!

It can only be an ignition-module/coil-pack/injector/injector harness/compression/spark plug problem and I don't have long! (I have to get it running right so that I can go and put it under load to seat the rings...!)

Any suggestions?

1) It has dead cylinders on both banks (looks like about 3 from pulling injector leads while it was running briefly.)
2) It will run with the one ignition module plugged in by itself, but not with the 2nd one plugged in by itself (I guess that this means more dead cylinders on the one bank than on the other...?) They were fine in December when I drove the car down to Texas though!
3) The injector harness checks out fine (noid-light tested all 6 injector tails and we have good pulse to all 6 injectors!)
4) All 6 injectors were reconditioned, but they all sat for 6-7-8 months now - installed in the heads but not being used. Could 2-3 of them start sticking because of sitting for so long after cleaning/reconditioning?
5) Have not checked compression yet - trusting that the motor build is fine - Dawie at Glenwood has done me right to date!
6) Have not checked the coil-packs yet - wouldn't know how at this stage either, but again - these things were fine to begin with - driving the car down here just this last December, it ran smooth.

Any suggestions where to take things to next?
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