Date:         Wed, 19 May 1999 10:07:06 +0200
Reply-To:     Duclos Darie <Darie.Duclos@UNIFR.CH>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Duclos Darie <Darie.Duclos@UNIFR.CH>
Subject:      Re: battery cable contact problem
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

> If your van is an automatic you could have problems with your neutral safety
> switch.  This can cause the starter not to work at all.  Or you could have
> intermittant problems with your ignition switch (for manual or automatic).
> I would suspect these before the actual cable itself.

Hi,

my van is manual. I have indeed had problems with my ignition switch
before. It melted down (or something) and had to be replaced. At the
time I drove a few weeks with wires hanging out the steering column,
with some little connectors which the mechanic had attached so that
I could hot-wire the van easily. :-)  But that wasn't an intermittent
problem: it worked fine, and suddenly it melted and stopped working.

Another thing is that during our tests (connecting the battery to
the starter directly, etc.) we jiggled the cables underneath the
van quite a bit, but we didn't touch the ignition switch at all,
so it would seem likely that a bad contact was jiggled back into
place, and the only way to explain the bad contact on a cable where
we see the 2 ends is a break along the way.

I haven't yet heard from anyone else who has had problems with this
cable, nor advice about whether to trust a second hand one.. Perhaps
mine is an exception. Are there little herbivores in North America
too that like to munch on cables in your motor? They're common in
Europe but I don't know what they're called in english.

Cheers.

Darie
'86 Westy