I bought a 89 about a year ago now, and I've had some electrical issues since I started driving it. Potentially unrelated, I've found a rubbery substance (liquid electrical tape? FlexTape/FlexSeal?) in many of the electrical connections. I'm not much of a mechanic, but I've never seen anything like this. I'm wondering if it was something that was done at the factory or if a previous owner thought they were SuperMechanic. Was this a common fix for something back in the day?





If I had to guess the key wired into the electrical under the dashboard is a weird way to circumvent the security system? It definitely makes me lean towards it being a hack job.




I've probably pulled 3 to 5 lbs of this crap out of the car over the past year. I've found it under the driver's side dash around the starter relay(?), near the ECM, stuffed into the MAP sensor, and in a few other places I can't recall right now. I'm really not sure what to do about it.

A couple of weeks ago it got really cold and the old rear hatch motor mount cracked. The battery went dead while the motor ran, trying to pull the hatch shut. The car was jumped, started, and made it home. I replaced the rear hatch motor and mount. Since I got it home the car will not start at all. When the key is turned, nothing happens. I've tried jumping the battery off of a portable battery pack. The battery reads as charged, but there is still no power or sounds when I turn the key. Next I replaced the starter, also with no luck. I started looking for the starter relay, thinking it could be that or a fuse in the fuse box under the dash. All of the fuses are good, but the starter relay looks nothing like the pictures I'm seeing of it on RockAuto.

I'm beginning to be at my wit's end with this project. If anyone has any advice, information, or options on what I can do to solve my problems here, I would be very grateful. Especially if you have pictures of what I should be looking at. It's looking more and more like I might need to have it towed to a shop and throw money I can't spare at a professional to fix it.

 

The material on the connector pins is the factory's sealant.

The rubber gooey gunk is part of the soundproofing / insulation that they used back then. It kinda dissolves and drips out eventually.

Not sure about this "shop" thing... isn't that what women do when they want a new pair of shoes or something? How would that help you fix your car?

Yes the reason someone put the key in there that way, was to defeat the VATS system. That may have something to do with why it won't start. Yes it's more a less a hack job. Nobody out here can tell you how some PO hacked up the car, and paying somebody else to fix that, is kinda dumb; putting somebody else's kid through college or braces or some expensive sport, basically. First thing to do would be to trace the wires through the system; a fat yellow wire leaves the ign sw, goes to the neutral or clutch safety sw (same basic function for auto or stick transmission), then to the starter relay, which would need to be told by the circuit involving that key, that it's OK to let the car start. Best to start there.

I don't think the starter relay is near the ECM. Seems to me, it's on the driver's side behind the kick panel, kinda above/behind the hood release cable. Butt I could easily be wrong, wouldn't be the first time. The nearest relay I can think of to the ECM, would be the power antenna one. Which might be why it doesn't look like replacement starter relays. The PA relay has, among others, white, green, & grey wires. The starter relay should have, among others, big fat purple or yellow wires. I can't recall which color they are at that point. Start starts out yellow at the ign sw and turns to purple at the NSS; I can't recall whether the relay is before the NSS in which case the wires would be yellow, or after it in which case they would be purple.

 

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what a NSS is. I can try to open up my steering column and start tracing wires from the ignition switch in the morning when I have more time to work on it, but I was hoping to be able to find the starter relay tonight to be able to check it before I went into work.

Everything I've seen said it should be behind the left hand kick panel near the hood pull handle too, but I can't find it there. I've found two other relays, which have part numbers corresponding to the VATS and door lock relays respectively, but unless I'm very blind and don't understand what I'm looking for (possible), it's not there.


^This is the door lock relay according to what I can find based off of the 12065122 part number. Definitely not what I'm looking for.




This is the VATS relay, from what I can find. I should probably replace it since it's fairly cheap and mine is a bit banged up, but it's also verifiably not my starter relay.




Guess I'll have to go over it more carefully when I have more time tomorrow. Thanks for the advice.

 

The NSS I would say is your neutral safety switch which is on the side of the auto shifter, That flat connector by the floor is where the starter enable relay plugs into. You can bypass it by jumping the two thick wires and it will fire up. You can also take a multimeter and get the resistance off the chip in the key and bypass the vats