Pontiac Repair: 2001 Pontiac Aztek, wont crank, 2001 pontiac aztek, pontiac aztek

Question
QUESTION: My daughter's Aztek will not crank, click, nothing when she tries to start it. The idiot lights, radio and everything else will come on, but no starter. Her husband had driven it to the corner store, came back, parked it and when she went to go to work...nothing. Connections to starter, battery and any other I could think od were checked.

ANSWER: Hey Fred:

it could be just a bad starter assembly on this. you need to crank it over and check the purple small wire at the starter solenoid for battery volatage when the key is turned to the crank position. if you have battery volatge there "use a 12 Volt test light" and it will not crank chances are it's a bad starter assembly. While your down there make sure the big red wire has battery voltage as well when  you crank the car. It should be there all the time but if you have a bad connection at the battery or high resiatnce in nthe cable the light will light dimly or not at all.  If there is No crank voltage on the purple wire you need to try to crank the car while you place the trnamission in neutral if it cranks then the safety switch on the trnamission is bad. This could have a bad starter relay as well that is in the under hood fuse block above the battery. look on the inside of the cover there is a road map as to what each realy is then swap that one with another in the box that has the exact same part # stamped on the top of it and see what ahppens if it cranks the relay is bad. that is where I would start looking.
Good luck :)


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: OK...starter checks out fine, replaced relay because I don't know how to test one and neutral safety seems fine. Still acts like no power to starter. I'm at a loss and can't afford to "have it towed in and we'll check it out for $110.00" as a dealership suggested. Any suggestions?

Answer
did you check for voltage at the starter purple wire Like I stated before? If you have power there the starter is bad if not you need to trace it backwards from the starter into the fuse box. there are multiple fuse that control this set up It's a stupid design  check the following fuse #'s in the under hood fuse box 19,27,40,48 and int the center console fuse box on the right side fuse 42. if all of those check out then check for power into the transmission safety swithc on the pink wire with it unplugged and then with it plugged in see if you have power out of the switch on the yellow wire you chouls have it in and out if you do then You need to see if the engine control module is grounding the crank relay. you can have someone crank the car and put your finger on the top of the crank relay and see if you feel it clicking if not chances are the engine computer is not grounding the relay and that could be a wiring issue between the module and the relay or a bad module or even a bad ignition switch. If you had access to a true scan tool and not a code reader you could see in the engine data stream if the engine module is seeing the "crank" request or not. Good luck that is about all the help I can give you and now you see what the dealer wants the $ to check it out.. It's a complex system But if you in the business as long as I have been you can do all of these checks and what I gave you the furst time in a very short period of time..