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Have i ever said on here how much i hate Chrysler PT Cruisers? well if i have already, i am sorry, I REALLY HATE PT CRUISERS!
Anyway i haven’t been on in a while because i have been busy with a ton of things one of them is fixing a car for a lady with little to no money, and the car was a 2001 PT Cruiser, and there is quite the story behind this one! and this one can be two lessons learned at once! Don’t just throw parts at the problem, and do very thorough research!
the lady is a friend of my mom, she has horrible luck with cars, her car will not start, no crank no start, so i go over and have a peak, have her turn the lights on and crank it, the lights don’t even dim, the car in fact does nothing at all! not a click, not a sound! so i do everything, check the battery and its good, connections too the battery suffice to do the job, connections to ground are good, connections to starter are good, wires all good, fuses check out, solenoids check out, so do relays!
the car has a fresh brand new starter thrown on it because before they figured just throw parts at it just for crap and giggles, and i could tell right there on the spot they just wasted money on a starter and a camshaft position sensor. so i did my diagnosis and was kind of figuring with the way the car was behaving the issue was a ignition switch, then did some further research online to discover that the ignition switch is a common failure with the PT Cruiser, so i take it apart check the ignition switch and its actuator rod, replace the ignition switch, put it back together, turn the kea… same result, i am puzzled beyond belief, i have checked the car up and down and still can’t figure it out, well within more digging into the catacombs of the interwebz i find my depressing answer, and a small red light between the fuel gauge and the temp gauge tells me the real story. Sure wish it was like my old buick where it said in all capital letters SECURITY!!!! but i pretty much had to tell the lady… sorry hun, but i just figured it out, its the cars security system and you are going to have too take it to the dealership.
lots of other fun stuff too, like someone fixed the negative battery cable lead by replacing the broken negative lead with a red positive lead that was brittle and broke when i went to tighten the battery back down, (because that went dead too…) and the hazard button was held in place by a large screw shoved between the peace of plastic trim and the button itself… you know a PT Cruiser is enough of a peace of junk, its even more of a peace of junk when people cobble them together.
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Someone needs to sit people with “luck” with cars like that, that they need to just pony up and but a Honda or a Toyota. When they do break, it’s easy to fix and parts are easy to come by, new or used.
Polished Turds are horrible cars to work on. Had to do a timing belt on one once. Never again.
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