Hello, best way to hot wire your car. 1. run a wire from the hot side of your battery to positive side of the coil 2. turn key to on. 3. put a remote starter on the starter solenoid 4. engage the remote starter . 5. that should get you going. 6. You will need to drop the steering cloum to access the ing. switch. It will have a large wire bundle going to it. Tony
Yes thats the part. It takes about 20 minutes to install. I would replace the headlight switch while I had that much dash apart.
Before I rip out a steering column, are there any other possibilities or is this pretty much it? Also, are there any detailed instructions out there? I've looked and can't find anything.
I did it in the driveway sitting in the driver seat the whole time. Ignore what that guy posted about hotwiring the car. Get the ignition switch. remove the glove box tray, drop the steering column, remove switch, put in new switch. It's like 20 minutes. an extra 10 to do the headlight switch too. I had the reverse problem of you until last month, I had power to crank but when I came back to run I lost my B+ power. Engine ran but nothing else worked. I spent 3 months tracking that to the ignition switch. And the worst part was it was intermittent. Because switches almost always go intermittent before total failure. Like when the stop switch went out on a machine I used to run, it took me 2 months to figure out the switch was going bad and I wasn't just going crazy.
you need to find the wire to the ignition (on the bottom of the steering column) and cut it then run that wire directly to your distributor I had the same problem thats how we got it fixed now my car starts every time and still uses the key switch try looking for a red wire with a yellowish green stripe the problem is somewhere in the travels of that wire between the key the brain and the distributor why it fails I dont know but thats how we fixed my car. good luck
Yeah, I used that method on another old car years ago but I couldn't remember how to do it correctly.
You could also try another thing. Turn the key to the on position, jump the starter solenoid with a screwdriver and see if it starts. if it does then you may have a bad solenoid. To check this have someone try to start the car from the ignition switch and put a test light/multi meter on the I terminal on the solenoid. If you do not have any power while cranking the car then you may well have found the problem. The ignition switch does not send any power to the ignition module during cranking, it gets its power from the solenoid. You can also check the wires at the ignition module. There are 2 connections on the module, one with 4 wires going to the distributor and one with 2 wires. The 2 wire connection is the one you need to look at. Disconnect the 2 wire connection, turn the ignition to run and check the voltage at the 2 terminals on the wiring harness side of the connection. You should have power at the Red wire. Then have someone turn the engine over with the ignition. You should now have power at the white wire. If you have power to the module then the module is probably bad. If not then you have found what circuit is bad and you can go from there. Red is ignition power and White is power from the solenoid in start mode. Hope this helps.
@ Fordmaster169...if the engine is turning but not starting, is the solenoid still a possible culprit? I thought the starter wouldn't turn without a working solenoid.
Just for ha ha's, try borrowing another module to try. You don't need to mount it or ground the case to test it. I've had bazillions of those go bad! They work, then they don't. They'll change the timing and cause the engine to run bad. A new one is about $17 bucks. Sorry, the price I quoted was a few years ago! Here's a link, but you may find this cheaper at another store: http://www.napaonline.com/Catalog/Result.aspx?Ntt=ignition+module&Ntk=Keyword&Nty=1&Dn=0&D=ignition+module&Dk=1&Dp=3&N=0%2b599001+101975+50026+2026022
