Hey guys, so I recently was driving home and the car died while braking, and wouldn’t even crank afterwards. Now that I’m going into it, I replaced the starter and clutch safety switch with no improvement. I even jumped the safety switch wires just in case and nothing. I’m getting 12v on the yellow wire for the safety switch inside the car and the starter is also getting twelve volts to the main hookup. But the connection from the main hookup to the purple wire on the starter solenoid is only getting five volts?

crk fuse is getting -0.08 volts no matter what I do too

I have no idea where else to look and would much appreciate some advice.

 

loose cable somewhere?

 

I tried looking around for that, but I traced it all the way to the firewall connection and it’s fine all the way, I have no idea how to test the continuity through the connection though.

and through some more testing the starter’s purple wire will get twelve volts for a split second before instantly dropping to 0 again. No idea what’s going on

 

You can measure continuity, but if its loose it can behave as you described

 

so it did turn out to be loose at the firewall, I managed to squeeze it in some more and took the whole connector out to clean and put dielectric grease in.

Now the starter is getting 12 volts at the purple wire when I turn the key but it’s still not cranking at all, and my crk fuse is now also getting power.

the battery should still be good, even tried jump starting it now that the purple wire has power and still not a thing

 

usually a dead battery on a jump start you would at least hear a click from the starter or some sort of noise. you not hearing anything?

 

Have you checked the started relay on the driver side kick panel? Possible VATS issue?

 

Can't be VATS, relay, dead battery, or any of that. Fugheddaboudit. The proper 12V is making it all the way through.

At this point the ONLY thing that can be causing this, is the starter itself. (well, maybe just the solenoid, butt w/e) Can't be any of that other circuitry. Not impossible that the solenoid failed and burned up the connection. Now that the connection is fixed, the solenoid may still merely be bad.

Back in the day, I would change out solenoids and re-use starters. In 2025, not so much. Just swap it out.

 

Yeah as it turned out the solenoid on the new starter was bad, put on a friend's starter to check and his cranked the car. Went and got it warrantied and now my car cranks just fine.