E
Expeditioner
Trying to help out a friend with his 99 Expedition...
He installed a push button ignition switch instead of putting in a new ignition switch a few years back. Car was starting fine up until just a couple days ago. With the key in start position nothing is getting power in the car. Pushing the button just results in a series of clicks, and the red wires going to the positive battery terminal were getting hot.
He disconnected the battery and replaced the starter and solenoid, hoping that there was a short in one of those, but no such luck, same problem as before. He also inspected the wires to see if there was melted insulation anywhere causing a short or vice versa, but couldn't find anything. (We didn't check every piece of wire since some of them are hard to get to, and going through the firewall, we're also not really good with voltmeters and don't really know how to check for continuity).
Even with the key out of the ignition and the wires hooked back up you can hear a clicking sound coming from the number 2 relay under the dashboard. (We also checked to make sure all our fuses were still good). I'm thinking there shouldn't be any power going to that relay and that there must be a short in the old ignition switch that just got gradually worse over time. Any thoughts? I'm thinking of replacing the ignition switch which is what we probably should have done in the first place. Any way to test it before we spend the money for a new switch?
He installed a push button ignition switch instead of putting in a new ignition switch a few years back. Car was starting fine up until just a couple days ago. With the key in start position nothing is getting power in the car. Pushing the button just results in a series of clicks, and the red wires going to the positive battery terminal were getting hot.
He disconnected the battery and replaced the starter and solenoid, hoping that there was a short in one of those, but no such luck, same problem as before. He also inspected the wires to see if there was melted insulation anywhere causing a short or vice versa, but couldn't find anything. (We didn't check every piece of wire since some of them are hard to get to, and going through the firewall, we're also not really good with voltmeters and don't really know how to check for continuity).
Even with the key out of the ignition and the wires hooked back up you can hear a clicking sound coming from the number 2 relay under the dashboard. (We also checked to make sure all our fuses were still good). I'm thinking there shouldn't be any power going to that relay and that there must be a short in the old ignition switch that just got gradually worse over time. Any thoughts? I'm thinking of replacing the ignition switch which is what we probably should have done in the first place. Any way to test it before we spend the money for a new switch?
