Dave M vin 03572
http://dm-eng.weebly.com/
Location: Northern NJ
Posts: 8,578
My VIN: 10757 1st place Concourse 1998
Just had my roommate look while I started it and he said there was still nothing. Guess I have another project for tomorrow...
Crisis averted - one of the green & purple wires had come unplugged at the switch. I probably bumped it while poking around under there chasing the startup gremlin. Far and away the easiest repair I've made yet.
Miraculously this one actually manifested while they were working on it. They checked the battery which tested good, but while doing that they discovered that my cutoff switch was a little loose. It's too intermittent to be sure yet whether tightening the connections on the cutoff did the trick but I'm crossing my fingers...
May have finally whipped this one! When I stopped by DPI to get some replacement bolts for my exhaust heat shield, I had Josh take a look at the wiring by the starter. I had thought the problem might be a bad connection in the blue scotch-lock in that cluster, but it turned out that wire didn't actually do anything. But while he was poking around in there he discovered that the whole starter wasn't actually bolted in correctly (apparently installer error by the seller) so it would work itself loose and sometimes randomly not ground. He replaced the starter and it hasn't done it since. He said that even if the problem recurs and that wasn't actually it, the starter was a disaster waiting to happen (possibly in the middle of Nebraska), so I guess my lost heat shield bolts were a blessing in disguise!
Location: CLE/PHX
Posts: 2,592
My VIN: 5646,5080, 5880, 10234, 3639, 2518, 10586, 1538
Great finally meeting you yesterday! I think we were all surprised to be able to grab the end of the starter and shake it around... This was a first by far. The starter is held in by three 8mm bolts. This one had a stripped out 8mm up top, 7 mm in the middle and a 5/16 bolt in the bottom. After seeing the starter fail to start the car multiple times in person and not once after wards I think the problem is fixed!
www.deloreanindustries.com Every Detail Matters
Location: Northern NJ
Posts: 8,578
My VIN: 10757 1st place Concourse 1998
Problems like that are difficult-to-impossible to help you with over the Internet. You find that kind of wacky stuff only by putting your eyes and hands on it. The Dreaded Previous Owner (DPI) strikes again! The bigger problem is once you find that kind of thing, now you have to worry what else was touched on the car?
David Teitelbaum
Yeah, this wasn't the first time I've had to redo something the seller said he fixed.
I felt like I should have caught this myself but maybe it wasn't as loose when I was poking around there originally. It definitely seemed like it was intensifying recently - the time I posted this thread was the first time it took more than a couple tries to start, and after that it would be OK for a week or two at a time, but when I was in PA was the first time it had done it two starts in a row and repeatedly taken 6-7 tries to get going. Really glad I didn't try to go another 1800 miles with it like that!