For the past couple months, I've been sorting out a '93 240 wagon which I picked up. It was a no start when I bought it, but the body was rust-free, the interior unshredded and beaucoup of new parts had been installed.

The seller had spent 6 months trying to get it to start and run predictably. During his effort he replaced the fuel pump, the ECU (yikes!), the coil, ignition wires, plugs, rotor, distributor cap, FI temp sensor and so many more things I can't recall them all.

When he showed the car to me he said, "Just watch, this time the son-of-a-bitch will probably start." It didn't. But, when he sprayed some ether into the intake air tract, it did chug a couple of times, so I felt the ignition (and hopefully the ECU) were probably kosher.

When I got it home, the first thing I did was to pull a known good FI relay from another car. Before I plugged it into the no-start wagon, I tried the suspect relay in the donor car. It started right up. I began to have visions of also spending six months of time on the car and still not have it plying the boulevards. Since I already had it in hand, I plugged the test relay into the no-start 240 and it fired right up every time I tried it. Problem solved, or was it?

While waiting for the replacement FI relay to arrive, I set about cleaning all the grounds and electrical terminals in the engine bay. When I pulled the red FI system wire from the terminal block near the battery, it came off with surprising ease, so I pinched the "legs" of the spade connector with a pair of duckbill pliers to close up the gap and increase the contact pressure. That's when one of the "legs" fell off almost as soon as I touched it.

I renewed the queefed out terminal, plugged in the original "defective" relay and went cruising, so to speak.

Once I found the bad terminal, everything the seller had told me started to make sense. He had said that the car ran like a champ - whenever it started, but it could also stall out with no forewarning and not restart. The few FI relays which have gone bad for me did not fail in an intermittent way. They all shit the bed and stayed there.

I feel very lucky. If I had a replacement relay on hand, I might have plugged it in without checking the wiring until the planets once again aligned to cause an open circuit at the weak terminal - then, who knows into what trouble-shooting Hell I would have been cast.

Rich