All right people on this forum have been able to save me more than once with my Ram but this one really has me scratching my head. I have a 97 Intrepid with a 3.5 that will not start. At first I though it was the fuel pump because it is obviously not getting fuel. I started with the relay, which turned out to be fine. Next I looked at the fuse which is definitely good. So lastly I got a new fuel pump and still it will not start. I decided to try and isolate the problem and discovered that there is no power at the fuel pump. There is also no power at the fuse but I do have power at the relay. Does anyone know where my problem is? I Think it must be a wire somewhere between the relay and the fuse, or am I way off? I unwrapped the wires around the battery but found no obvious breaks. Does anyone know where I should look or any common problems with the Intrepid that may be causing my problem.

Please help,

Boss

 

Lets talk pins. When you said "there is also no power at the fuse but I do have power at the relay" what do you mean? Do you mean you have power at the coil side of the relay ro power at the contact side (pin 5A or 5B)? Both powers are feed by diffrent circuits. There is a 20A fuse in the PDC and a 10A in the junction block which if feed through its own set of contacts in the ignition switch. The 20A is the power for the pump, but without the 10A signal from the switch at the relay, the pump will not see the power through the relay. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you? If not, let me know what pins you have power on and we can take it from there. You could have a bad ignition switch, wire, or fuse pnl.

 

I got it figured out, when i checked for power at the fuse i must not have had a good ground. I have three hots testing the backside of the fuel pump relay. Two are incoming from the shutdown and ignition switch and one from the 20A fuse in the power distribution box. The fourth should run to the pump. I went back to trunk and tried testing for power once agian. with my tester connected to the terminals for + and - in the plug I had power so it should start, But then i relized that the wire diagrams published for intrepids are WRONG! which i got from dodge (these are identical to those in hayes repair manual)The bk/tan wire is the ground for the gauge not bk, bk is the ground for the pump. the ground wire is intact for the gauge but not for the pump. I found the bk ground wire for the pump broken on the front upper corner of the tank. So now all i have to do is drop the tank and fix the ground, I took the plug apart on the pump and hooked up the ground for the gauge to the pump. even though this wire is undersized it worked to drive it into my shop. The ironic thing is if dodge didnt have that nice service door for the fuel pump in the trunk i would have had to drop the tank to put the new fuel pump in and would have eaisily noticed this problem a wk ago.

Thanks for the thoughts

Boss

 

Cool, so it ended up being the ground. I checked my schematic (Dodge shop manual), and I also show the black is for the guage (black/tan for the pump). I'm not all that suprized, I had found a larger error in my 96 RAM manual dealing with the fan switch. FMI, was the pin # correct (3 for the pump and 4 for the sending unit)? How about the wire guage (was your black/tan actually thin wire and the black fat (16 guage)? I ask because my book shows the fat (16 guage) wire going to the guage on pin 4! I want to correct my drawing for future reference. Thanks,
Kurt