Good morning and good after noon.

I need some help, big time. I am replacing my heatercore, spent all day getting the dash down to the firewall. Let me tell you, some work for sure. We got the new core in, and started plugging stuff back in, getting the dash back together. Before we got to far i sudjested we try turning it over before we get to far in, to makre sure we aren't forgetting a plug some place. Well sure enough nothing happens, it is in park, and when i turn the key the fule pump comes on, the glow ring lights up but the starter gets no juice. I checked all the plugs going into the fuse box twice, they are all installed by color so it's pretty straight forward. We double checked that nothing is hanging loose. My old man said we might have burnt one of the starter relays. But when i went under the hood to investigate, the relays aren't stuck together.

Do i just need to progress more into putting it together? I am only as far as bolting down the metal frame that everything screws into. The gauge cluster, air bag, lighter, lights, and heater controls are still unplugged. I plugged in the gauges to see if that was it still nothing.

I need some advice. Thanks everyone.

 

does it throw up any codes when you turn the key?....you might have to unhook the battery's for ten min's or so and then hook them back up...should reset your computer...not sure if it's work but its worth a shot

 

The gauges didn't say check anything, i don't have a code reader so i am out of luck there. But we did leave the battery unhooked over night, we just called it quits for the night when we got to that point. Once i get some food in me i am going back out to try to figure it out. If i can get my phone working it'll try to post some pics of where i am at.

 

Smart move. When you are tired/hungry, that's when mistakes set in and you really **** yourself off. I say disconnect the battery and then retrace your steps. Something is disconencted somewhere that leads to the starter. You *may* haev to tear into the dash again. It sounds like either a lead or a fuse to the starter is broken/blown.

Break it down into the little pieces and then attack the problem.

 

yeah that is what we are thinking, might be a fuse, the ones under the hood don't look visably burnt. The ones in the fuse box are all fine. The point i need to trace back is we were about to take the plastic behind the gauges out, so we had to un plug the lighter, and a few other things, right before that is the last time it fired up, because i was joking that we should just take it to a shop and let them finish.

After we unplugged some stuff to get the plastic to come free, i remeber the signal flasher started to go off, sounded like i was signaling to make a turn but the signal on the steering wheel wasn't in a position to do that. So i have to find what we did then.

Do the fuses under the hood look burnt when they are done? I assumed yes because the fuses in the box, you can tell right away they are done with a visual inspection. Also to note we didn't unplug the battery until we started having problems. So through this whole mad unplugg session we had power to most everything (Maybe not a good idea)

 

Burnt, or the link is broken, just like any other fuse. And yes, it was NOT a good idea to have power to everything while you were unplugging connections. You better take the time to trace everything, because if you drag it to a shop, bend over.

 

Don't you have to have the airbags hooked up to turn it over? I thought that was a safety feature on newer vehicles, (vehicles with deployed airbags need to have something reset, can't remember what...) Maybe the trucks thinking there's no airbags...I'm just scatter shooting right now, somebody else might be able to confirm that.

 

Very good point. Today's vehicles have so damned many redundancies built into the electrical system I'm surprised that if the power point fuse blows that the headlights don't activate.

 

well, it did turn over without the air bags hooked up. The good news is it's all running and back together.

I don't even know what i did different. My brother came over with his jeep and we pulled his fuses from under his hood and swapped them into mine. didn't turn over, so we put mine back in. As i said before, the last time we turned it over, was before we unplugged the lighter and power outlet. So for kicks i plugged it in. Then it turned over. Maybe we just had to energize one of the relays on that circut. But she's back together and running fine. I just need a new bolt for my battery post as it was so badly corroded it didn't last with all the tighning and loosning.

If the core goes again i'm just going to pay some one the $800 to do the work. I put in a few hours friday, most of the day sat, and from 9am untiul now sunday, some serious man hours. I think the dealership quoted me 12 hours labour, so i should have known.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

 

**** on that. You've been down this road, so now the learning curve is out of the way. I had a Ford Escort once that I dismantled the dash not once, but THREE times. By the third time I could have it all apart inside of 20 minutes. That's a far cry from the 3 hours I spent on it the first time.