Hey guys. Got into my 94 earlier to go somewhere, just came off a two month project of replacing the timing belt and a three month rebuild of the entire brake system, and putting new tires on it for winter. Gotta love electrical failures for flavor.
So, here's what I know so far. It's NOT the battery, when I was able to get the engine to turn over and start, it turns over nice and fast.
When I first got into the car, the dash lights were very faint when I turned the key.
If you tried to turn the headlights on, you could hear a relay in the dash making racket.
If you tried to turn one of the map lights on (key in the ignition or out), it was very faint as if the battery was dead.
Randomly, the ignition would come all the way on, you could hear the fuel pump engage, and the car would start, but it died at first, as if someone had cut the electricity to the coil.
Eventually the engine would stay running, but once I turned the engine off I was back to square one, faint lights, little electrical signal from anything, and the ignition just seemed to engage correctly at will.
Obviously some sort of resistance or short (I can't tell which) is occuring between the ignition and the battery, and it's doing it with the ignition engaged or completely disconnected with the key out. I've tried messing around with the instrument cluster on top of the dash (headlights, etc, that piece has been loose since I bought the car), as well as the wiring underneath the dash, nothing I'm doing determines when the ignition correctly engages and the dash lights turn on so you can start the car. As of the last time I shut the engine off, I couldn't get the dash to come back at all, just extremely faint lights.
Or something worse is happening.
Does this sound like a rubbed wire somewhere, or does this sound like maybe the computer could be failing, or a short in a wire, or the ignition switch itself? I really need this car running asap.
Thanks, and here's a video kind of illustrating the symptoms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuVznPs0_ts