I hope someone can help me with this. The car is a 1991 Trans Am GTA with the 350 TPI. I went to work on the car's cooling system today to replace all the coolant hoses. I reconnected the battery and turned on the ignition to the ON poisition just to roll the windows up but the car starts, and it sounds like the starter won't disengage. I didn't turn the key to the RUN position, just ON. i shut the car off and tried again, same thing. I disconnected the battery again just to be on the safe side. But what's wrong here? The car started up perfectly this morning when I drove it onto the ramps. I hope someone can help. Thanks in advance.

 

Strange one. . . Look for something metal (bolt, screwdriver) that was dropped down onto the top front of the starter soleniod. If a piece of metal shorts across some of the starter soleniod terminals this can happen. Else maybe a bad ignition switch or bad soleniod.

RBob.

 

Well, the problem was solved today. Thought I'd share my findings so people have a solution to this porblem. It turned out to be the remote starter circuit that the previous owner wired into the car. Whenever you try to reconnect the battery, the metal to metal contact betwen the battery and the metal lead causes light electrical surges making the remote-start-up circuit want to start the car on it's own. That's why sometimes, when I disconnect and then later reconnect the battery the car's remote start-up circuit arms by itself and starts the car. last night when I was reconnecting the battery, the car's remote start armed but aborted the start-up at the last second. Looks like it fooled the car's circuitry somehow by keeping it in the phase of start-up where it engages the starter motor. The solution I had was to rip out the remote starter circuit that was wired in. I rarely ever use it anyway. Looks like I'm the first to run into this problem. I hope this helps someone in the future.

Thanks for the reply RBob, I'll keep that in mind for the future.