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I have fought an intermittent no start for some time now on my 1986 245DL (AKA Inga) with 264K.
Turn the key and nothing would happen, now you could jump the battery and she would start. That headed me off to replacing wiring, battery, swapping out the starter with the backup (PUP find), a new ignition (which did get rid of a voltage drop on the first three of four fuses), and all sorts of other silliness trying to track this down once and for all. The problem did seem to go from pretty constant to very intermittent. More than once I have declared victory only to find out that was not it. The part that drove me up the wall was that when the starter would not engage, there was 12 Volts on the starter solenoid wire.
I have in the past measured the Neutral Position Safety Switch with a meter and always had continuity but this was also when the car would start. I have also removed the cover, loosened the screws and moved the switch around to make sure it was aligned correctly. Did the Stick shift jiggle and moving in in and out of part without fixing the problem. Every time in fact that I went to track the problem down the car would start up and the problem would go away for a time.
Recently purchased a simple remote stater switch, not the kind you install in the car and leave it in there. But the kind that you connect one end to the solenoid and the other to the battery. Turn the key to position II and squeeze the trigger and Inga would start right away every time. So every time the car would not start, open the glove box, pop on the switch and start the car.
Pulled the connector off the switch and added a jumper so that the switch was out of the circuit almost two weeks ago. Not an single issue with starting the car using the jumper. Left the side panel off so you could get to the connectors and started measuring the contact resistance through the neutral switch every once and a while. I knew that when the car was hot seemed to be the time that you could have the best chance of the problem. Drove Inga around quite a bit today and just before getting out of the car put the meter across the switch contact with the car in park. At first there was an open on the 200 ohm scale and then it dropped down to about 10 ohms. Hooked up the wires, turned the key and no start. Put the jumper back in and she fired right up when you turned the key.
An aftermarket (Sigh... Scantech) switch) just arrived this week from the northeast and decided to put in it. After installing and getting it calibrated, I pulled the factory switch apart. The contacts are very worn and it also looks like the problem was that the heat (and it does get hot down under the stick shift) and the Gulf humidity have over time lead to loose contact across the switch. There is two ohms resistance across the contacts all the time on the old and close to zero on the replacement.
The old factory switch donated it's connector to make a Neutral Safety Switch jumper and will stay in the glove box for some time and the remote starter trigger is going to ride in the back just in case.
I hope to heck that this is the end of it.
Regards,
Paul
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