Hello - The 1988 240 that my daughter drives at school wouldn't start last week. So I drive out and sure enough the engine cranks but won't start. Not even really trying to start. I notice that I can't hear the main fuel pump running the normal 1 or 2 seconds after I stop cranking the starter.

So, I check the #6 fuse and it is fine. Pull the glovebox and jumper terminal 30 to terminal 87 on the fuel pump relay pigtail. No sound from the pump. So, I jump from fuse #4 to #6 and finally the pump comes on. So now I check for voltage on terminal #30 and it is floating anywhere from 2-8VDC on my meter with the key on or off. So, I think maybe I caused a short in the wiring harness as I had replaced the heater blower motor about three weeks before and moved around a ton of stuff fighting with that. The car did work fine for the three weeks.

I get to looking more closely at the fuse box and I realize that of the three spades for #6 only the hot side has a wire (red) connected. In other words, the two fuse protected spades (towards the front) don't have wires connected and it would appear that the fuse is not protecting any circuits. Is this typical for an 88?

I found that if I jumped battery voltage to terminal #30 the car would start and run. To get it home so I could work on it I ran a wire from one of the two unused spades on fuse #6 and back stabbed it into the relay pigtail. Car ran home fine. Any thoughts on how this should be wired or am I missing something obvious? I didn't have any loose wires hanging around the fuse box that looked like they had fallen off.

On the multimeter the fuel pump was drawing less than 6A at idle. Should fuse #6 and terminal #30 on the relay always be at 12V? The Haynes manual seems to imply that the key must be on for voltage to be present. Almost feel like buying another 240 just to have something to compare it too. Any suggestions/thoughts would be appreciated and sorry for the lengthy post.

Adam