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So my girlfriend has a 93 Pontiac Bonneville 3.8 v6. The other day she drove to work then when she went to leave her car wouldn’t start. So I went and checked the battery and it was getting 12.39v So I figured that was ok but i thought why not try to jump it because it was just a tad low. Tried to jump it and still had no clicking or anything. So I figured it was the starter. ( I guessed this because about a year about we got a starter from a salvage yard and put it in and it worked but its still a used starter .) So I had the car toed and I pulled the starter out. When I went to take the starter out I noticed that the back bolt was missing and the starter was just hanging by the first bolt. So I figured this was the problem but I took it to Auto Zone to have the starter tested anyway and the starter passed. So I bought a new bolt from a hardware store and went home. Put the starter back in and every thing went smooth besides the back bolt. The back bolt bottoms out about half an inch before the bolt head hits the metal. But I went ahead and tightened it as far as I could and hooked every thing else up. Then hooked up the battery and then went to start the car and nothing happen aging. Same thing the only thing you hear when you turn the key is on loud click. So I then took my volt meter down to the starter and made sure I was able to get 12 volts and I did.
I have heard that sometimes Auto Zones tester can give false positives because they have more power than some battery’s. So I pulled the starter back out and tried to jump the starter to see if I could just get it to turn. so I got some jumper cables and hooked it up to my battery ( which is good and I checked and was reading 12.69)
I put the negative on the body of the starter then I put the positive on the top terminal ( The terminal that is not the S) Then took a long screw driver and touched the tip to the jumper cable and then the body of the screw driver to the S terminal and the starter kicked right on.
So Im not sure now if I have a solenoid problem or I have a wire problem or what. There is only one other thing I can add. When the key in in the key slot when you try to turn the car on the security light is flashing. It has never before done this. It didn’t do it last night only after i put the starter back in. So Im not sure if this is the problem or not.
Any advice would be amazing
Thanks!
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clean the terminals of the starter with a small wire
brush.check that the ground is not broken or corroded.
also clean the positive cable. if the starter works out
of the car then pos or neg is missing or weak.Would the fact that the new bolt I got bottoms out would that have anything to do with it not working? I know you need both of them to ground it out.
OK after doing a few more test(drop down) and I also checked the two wires and they were both good. After doing some research online I am pretty sure that the car is in the security mode. I know that with her car it doesn’t send the ignition signal to the starter and I know from the test when you turn the key over the only wire that doesn’t get power is the ignition or the S post. So does any one have any experience with dealing with the factory security system? I know from the reading I have done that its not real easy but it seems like it can be done.
Sounds like you will have to bypass the circuit. Get a wiring diagram from here:
http://bbbindustries.com/index.html
You’ll need to figure out how much resistance you will need to bypass the system and which wires to tie the resistor into. You can use a meter to check the resistance on the key and go from there.
I don’t know much about those old security systems, and the above wiring diagram may help that. In a ’93, any security device may not be very sophisticated.
As far as testing a starter, you should begin with first principles. A voltage drop test under load will be much more reliable than a simple voltage test at rest. Eric did a very good video of that, and I also did a vid that may help. Here’s the one that I did.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnmnWuuLfzE[/video]
This sounds very much like a connection issue, this video might better explain what I’m talking about.
You might also find this video helpful.
Ok. So It wasn’t the starter but it was the built in security system. I also Figured out how to fix this with out taking it to the dealer and it only cost a little under 6 bucks and took less than an hour.( The dealer gave me an estimate of around $600 )
I am going to post this in the How To section too.
So how the VATS system works is that there is a resistor in the key and in the ignition cylinder. If something is put into the cylinder that does not have the same resistance the car goes into security mode and will not let the car crank so that the car can not be stolen.
This is what happened to my girlfriends car. So What you can do is measure the resistance of the key( This is measured in Ohms if you don’t know) Her key was 1.46 but all keys have different resistance ratings. You measure this but getting your voltmeter and on a two sided key( The key will have two black squares in the middle of the key body with a line in the middle of the black square.) put your negative on one of the metal lines and then the positive on the other line. When you do this you should get the resistance.
After that you will need to go to Radio Shack and by a resistor the is equal or very close to the resistance of the key. You will also need to buy some kind of crimping tool to keep the resistor connected to the wires. You can also soder them if you have the space.
Once you have the parts you will need to go to your car and probably remove some panels near the steering wheel. You are looking for an orange wire. This wire will be running down from the steering wheel. Inside this wire there will be to white wires. You will need to cut the orange wire and then take the side that is going to the fire wall and need to slice the orange wire open so that you are able to see the two white wires. You don’t need to do anything with the side that comes from the steering wheel. You will need to the strip the two white wires. You are going to take the resistor or resistors that you bought and hook one of the white wires that you stripped on one side of the resistor and then the other white wire to the other side of the resistor. If you have some one to help you can test to see if this has worked. As long as your hold the resistor against the wires the car should turn over if you have done everything correctly.
Now if this doesn’t work and you have done everything correctly you can have a ECM problem or a key problem. Figuring out what the problem is is kinda tricky but this method doesn’t really hurt because its very cheap and from what I have read you will have to get a new key or ECM but I am not exactly sure about this. I have not done this. So You will have to look in to this on your own.
If you do some research you will find a lot of information. And A TON of walkthroughs.
Also There is some good YouTube videos on this too.
I put the most basic way of doing this fix. I saw some people who make the wires look nice and people who make more complicated systems, so its kinda up to you.
Just one side note I did see a cool fix where the guy put a toggle switch on his fix and when he had to leave his car in a bad part of town he would just flip off the switch and leave his car in the security mode. then when he got back to his car he would just flip the switch and the car would be out of it. Kinda neat.
Here is a link to what I used.
http://vats.likeabigdog.com/
Also, here is a basic picture that might help.
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