1995 Saturn SW2 will not start, odd electrical issues too

1995 Saturn SW2 will not start, odd electrical issues too
This post is a bit long-winded, but I know the more detailed my description of my problem is, the more likely someone can help me. :)

I have a 1995 SW2 4sp. automatic, 1.9L twin cam engine with 140K miles.
3 days ago (Friday), I noticed while driving that the clock on my aftermarket stereo was wrong, as though the battery had come disconnected. I hadn't disconnected it, so I think wtf and continue driving. The clocks on Clarion stereos are not easy to remember how to set, so I'll find the instructions and do it later. After all, the car is driving fine.

Next day (Saturday) I drive the car on a few errands, all is well. Gotta remember to find the instructions so I can reset my clock. Either that or wait till midnight to unhook the battery.

Now, yesterday (Sunday) I get in the car to go to the store. The engine cranks, but does not start up. WTF? I think if the fuel pump went out, I would have had some kind of warning, like crappy throttle response beforehand, but no. I was in a rush to get going for the day, so I locked up and got in my other vehicle.

When I get back later, it is getting dark. I try to start the car again, same thing. It cranks, but no gas, no fire. I also happen to notice that my dome light isn't working, no matter what position I switch it to. So with key still in ignition, I get out and walk to my other vehicle to get my flashlight. I want to check for fuses. When I get back to the Saturn, I realize the chime that reminds you your keys are in the ignition is not beeping at me. I remove the keys, turn on the headlights and leave the door open. No chime. Odd.

So I proceeded to check the fuses and relays, even swapping the HVAC and Fuel Pump relays, since they are the same. No blown fuses. Checked the fuse panel in the engine bay. All seems to look good. Try to start, nopers, just cranks.

The battery seems to not be weak, and there's 3/4 tank of gas. I called 2 Saturn dealerships today. One guy at the first Saturn dlr (28 miles away) thinks somehow the engine is flooded, and that I need to mash the gas pedal down and crank for 20 seconds on the starter. He didn't seem to react to my observations of the chime and dome light not working anymore.

The guy at the other Saturn service dept. says I need to tow it in (30 miles away in the other direction) and have them run diagnostics, but he did not have enough info to tell me anything on the phone. I will try the first guy's advice when I get home tonight, but I don't think it'll help.

I need help in the worst way, guys! Right now I'm looking at over $100 just to get my car to a Saturn service dept., and the 'local mechanic' says he'd have to check it out as well, but no ideas offhand.

Do these cars' fuel pumps make an audible click/whirring sound at ignition on, like my old Prelude and my Explorer? Cuz my Saturn doesn't make sound except for the initial relay click when key is in ON position, then 2-3 seconds later a secondary click.

Thank you, and sorry for the long post.

-- Il Xebius


UPDATE: Well, when I got home, I decided to re-check everything. I got out my trusty handy-dandy battery terminal wrench and tightened up the terminals. Important to note here -- the terminals were not loose! I tightened them up about 1/4 turn each, which was pretty firm.

Anyhow, I got in the car, the dome light came on, the chime beeped, and the car started. I'll post back in a couple days to let everyone know if this was the problem/solution.

UPDATE II: About an hour later, I went back out to take a drive, and the car failed to start again. This time, the battery wrench was no help, so I'm still stuck! Is this the battery, or are my terminals faulty? There is no corrosion, and the threads look good on the terminal bolts. Is it possible to screw them in too tight? I AM pleased, at least, to narrow down my problem to the battery/terminals!

  ilxebius

you played with the battery connections and it started if these connections are a dull grey and not shiny then clean the terminals and post with a wire brush or battery terminal cleaner tool also check some positive terminals have two wires a heavy gage going to the starter and a smaller gage going to the main fuse box under the hood check these connections if they apply as this smaller wire will supply power to other functions of the car like you domelight and chimes stereo etc

  osborste

Thanks osborste!

You were right on the money. The contact areas WERE dull grey, and I cleaned the terminals on the battery and the contacts on the cables with a brass brush until they were shiny. For good measure, I also unbolted the connection where the positive lead connects to the fuse block in the engine bay and scrubbed that as well.

Dome light works, chime works, and most importantly, the fuel pump works -- thus allowing me to start my car. ;)

On a side note: once the battery connection was good, I turned the key to the ON position and listened... YES, the fuel pumps on these cars ARE audible.
*click* *whirrr*

  ilxebius

Well a month later, the problem has returned.

I turn the key to the ON position...

* No sound of fuel pump energizing
* No Domelight
* No Chime
* I also noticed no radio (was off last month when this happened)

> External lights work: head, tail, marker lights (not dim)
> Horn works
> Starter works
> Instrument cluster lamps work

I thought I'd try what I did last month and clean the battery terminals, but when I unscrewed them, they looked shiny still. But just for good measure, I tried doing the following:

^ replaced both terminal bolts
^ re-scrubbed the contacts on the cables and the battery terminals with a wire brush
^ un-bolted the positive lead from the battery to the engine bay fuse block and scrubbed the contacts with wire brush (SHINY!)
^ un-bolted the body ground, located on the fender-well near the engine bay fuse block and scrubbed the stud, nut, and all 3 ring terminals shiny

Re-assembled all nice and snug....

STILL no dome, chime, radio, or fuel pump

Starter still cranks, exterior lights, horn, instrument cluster lights still work.

I am stumped! And having to take my Explorer to work on my daily commute is gonna put me in the poor house fast with these gas prices.

Thanks all.

  ilxebius

Just wondering....how old is the battery? Are you sure it's not going bad?

  97Talonchik

The battery is less than 2 years old. It has good voltage... Enough to have the headlights on full brightness and crank the starter at full speed (no, I haven't overdone either one :PP ).

Continuity checks out across all points of the negative battery wire, from body ground to negative terminal to alternator terminal, and stays good no matter how much I wiggle and twist the wires.

Continuity looks good from positive terminal to engine bay fuse bank, even when wiggling the wire. I am getting ready to get into the conduit in the engine compartment that contains the smaller positive leads that come off the positive battery cable.

I am not sure where else to look at this point, but I have already yanked the center console surrounding the shifter and handbrake, and yanked the stereo as well. This should give me plenty of room for my test leads on my multimeter to check all the wires going into the passenger compartment fuse panel.

  ilxebius

have you tested the ignition switch itself as this will turn on fuel pump/ignition module/ecm signal etc. the horn and lights are fed from the fuse panel .your igniton switch maybe bad or going bad at the power feed to the fuel pump/ignition gotta pic of the switch and should be somewhere down the steering column or behind the key switch

  osborste

I'll look at that. Seeing your photo helps me to understand that even though the starter will crank when I turn the key, those multiple contacts mean that just the one lead that controls my accessories can still be bad.

What exactly am I checking for on this switch? And is there a way to jump the contacts so I can manually make the domelight, etc activate, thus bypassing the switch? That will be a big help in determining that all my other wiring is still good and help me focus on the correct problem area.

  ilxebius

you may find 2 power supply wires
then 1 will be for acc/heater/fan
then 1 will be for engine/ignition/fuel pump
then 1 will be for all else
i'll look at some of the sites i use for car remote starter installs and repost a link

  osborste

heres the link
http://www.bulldogsecurity.com/diagrams/diagrams.htm
it should help to understand what colour wire is for what

  osborste

Great, I'll climb under there and see what I can find out.
...
(time passes)
...

Well, I ran out of light for the day, and I've taken off the top of the dash and disabled the airbags so they don't pop me in the face. :thumbs:

I got off the instrument bezel, but now I am stuck trying to separate the top and bottom halves of the steering column cover. I took off the 3 screws from underneath, and I can partially split the top from bottom column covers. Only I can't split them in the area right behind the back of the steering wheel's center.

I guess I'll get back at it tomorrow afternoon and try some more to separate them. Stupid Haynes manual is too vague about this procedure...

______
ilxebius

  ilxebius

try this should help
http://www.autozone.com/servlet/UiBroker?ForwardPage=/az/cds/en_us/0900823d /80/19/ab/10/0900823d8019ab10.jsp

  osborste

I finally got the ignition switch out, and it is fine. Here are a photo of my actual switch and a diagram showing what connections are made during each key position (shown in blue).

http://taurosmud.com/~kelly/ign-s-phto.jpg
http://taurosmud.com/~kelly/ign-s-diag.jpg

As you can see, everything is as it should be, with good continuity. PLUS, I got to thinking...

* regardless of key position or even presence, my dome light would work independently of the ignition switch.

* even with no key, if I turn on the headlights, the chime should sound

Since neither of these are occurring, I could have ruled out the ignition switch before removing it. I guess it is good though that I have tested it.

Any more ideas? I have begun studying the wiring diagrams for my car (Haynes Manual) and pretty soon I will be physically tracing them through the car's wires this afternoon.

Thanks for all the great ideas so far...

UPDATE --

After testing voltages on the fuel pump and chime fuses with the positive lead on my multimeter and the negative lead grounded to frame, I find that I'm not getting 12 volts like I do on other fuses in there. So all these fused circuits are getting their power loss from a common area.

I examined the wiring diagrams and found a common denominator. There's one trace that is common between the fuel pump fuse, chime fuse, body (door open switches for domelight) fuse, and passive restraint fuse. This trace leads back to a contact on the CHIME / DELAYED DOME MODULE, which is an oblong white plastic box on the back side of the interior fuse panel, right below the flasher unit. Before I try to figure out where to find another one of these, can anyone confirm my suspicions that this item may be the culprit?

Thanks!

UPDATE again... Well, this morning the Saturn dealer's service department confirmed that a faulty chime/delayed dome module could contribute to the radio, domelight and chime not working, but could not confrim whether the fuel pump circuit would be affected. The service manager told me they were too busy for him to pull a tech to talk to me, and they could not tell me how I could test my module to determine if it was bad or good. So far, I have not had any luck finding another 95 S-series without power locks to swap modules in order to test :( Saturn told me the part is 37 bucks, so I ordered one anyway and will wait for it to arrive. Meanwhile, I am still stumped.

  ilxebius

checking here the fuel pump is seperate from the chime module
http://www.autozone.com/servlet/UiBroker?ForwardPage=/az/cds/en_us/0900823d /80/19/a7/77/0900823d8019a777.jsp

  osborste

:thumbs: :thumbs: :thumbs: :thumbs: :thumbs: :thumbs:

After I removed the IPJB (fuse box inside the car) from under the center console, I disconnected the the wire harnesses from the back: A smaller, square-ish snap-in harness in the upper center, then the 2 vertically rectangular ones on the left and right sides. Those two are held on with a 7mm bolt in the center of each. One is grey and the other is black.

THIS IS WHERE I FOUND THE PROBLEM!

Looking at the backside of the fuse panel when it is right-side-up, I observed the left-hand bank of contact pins and saw that terminal F5 was a bit charred. Apparently, the female connector in the wire harness was not tight enough, so years of the electricity arcing to connect had burnt the surface of the pin until it was no longer conductive!

I took my little brass wire brush and scrubbed all sides of the contact pin in there until nice and shiny. Then I removed the offending pin from the wire harness with my pin pulling tool (this wire is a thicker, solid red wire -- a primary power input to the fuse block). After using a very tiny flathead screwdriver to gently scrape the inside contact areas clean, I then used the screwdriver to gently flex up the 'tongue' portion inside the female area to assure a snug fit so the next time this is assembled there is no more air gap between male and female.

After putting the wire and pin back into the wire harness, I reattached the harnesses with their bolts and pushed all wires inward toward the fuse block in order to assure each wire's pin was fully seated on the contact pins inside. Once I had my fuse block all reconnected, I placed it in a safely insulated spot and reconnected my battery.

My dome light came on. I put the key in...my chime sounded. I turned the key to ON...the fuel pump came to life! Yes! Then I started the car and cried a single tear of joy. After that, I disconnected the battery and put my car all back together. I have been driving happily for 3 days now!

I just wanted to post my solution so any other fellow Saturn owners with the same mysterious problem would spare themselves lengthy and costly troubleshooting at the shop. Big thanks to everyone for all your input!

ilxebius

  ilxebius

I vote this thread as a sticky for ilxebius' persistence and example of how odd and bad things can get even though the fix is an ummm easy, no, inexpensive thing.

  meckano

Could I please have an update on your trouble and solution back in 05?
I have the exact same symptoms w my 01 SL2 (no power to relay for fuel pump, chime, radio and dome light do not work, all idiot lights in dash flicker for several seconds when key goes to ACC) and am about to disassemble the interior fuse box like you did.

A question to all: a braided/woven ground strap that is attached to one of the bolts/brackets holding the interior fuse panel fell out when I started to undo the bolts. The top end (female slip connector) apparently was unconnected and simply dropped downwards into view! It is about 10-12 inches long and may be for the radio/CD player (aftermarket) or the BCM box...

Started to remove the front panel around the AC control panel leading up to the radio/CD faceplate, all snap connectors so far,,,but got cold feet as I got higher.

Can anyone give any advice on this (and my FP, fuse and relay not getting any juice)?

BTW, my ignition switch is goofy: sticks between lock and acc/run. Takes several tries...and key will come right out when it is on ACC and Run. Feels like it was jimmied during prev owner's time.... It was like this when the engine/FP ran. Could this affect power to relay/fusebox?

Aloha!!

  hawaiianstyle