Pontiac Repair: 96 Bonneville starting trouble, pontiac bonneville, starter solenoid

Question
QUESTION: Hi Todd,
I have a 96 Pontiac Bonneville SE V6 with 135,000 miles. It has been a good, reliable car until a couple of months ago.
It now has some kind of intermittent starting problem. When I turn the ignition, all electricals light up but the starter does nothing at all. No click, no nothing. Lights do not dim. All the dash lights are on including the airbag and antilock indicators. My friend claims to be able to hear the fuel pump energizing but I haven’t heard that. Has a new battery. Sometimes I wait a bit and then it fires right up. If it won't work in the morning, I'll try again when I get home from work and it will fire right up. It can go for 2 or 3 weeks without a problem. Yesterday morning it would not start but would when I got home. This morning, it would not start again. This may be a coincidence but one day it totally shut off while I was in traffic but started back up once I rolled over to the side of the road. I have tried the new, never used ignition key thinking it might be the key resistor but that didn't make any difference. I’m worried about taking it to the shop as most intermittent problems are hard to diagnose and I don’t want them to replace lots of components on a trial and error basis. What do you suggest for a plan of action?

ANSWER: Hi rick;

you may be on the right track with the key/security system issue. those cars had problems with the wire harness that attaches the lock cylinder ro the rst of the secuirty sytem. The wires frey and break and then have intermittant contact in the column. Pretty comm and if it has a lot of miles on it VERY common. I would first when it's in a fialed state ansd will not crank check to see if you indeed are missing the "crank" signal to the starter solenoid that is a purple wire use a 12Volt test light and when someone is cranking the car see if you indeed have battery volatge there or not if you do it's a starter motor problem if not you have to trace the loss of crank volatge back into the car. next time it happens too try cranking the car with it in neutral you could have a safety switch on the transmission that is bad and cause this as well the car should crank when the transmission is in neutral as well as park. good luck :)


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QUESTION: Todd,
Do you think that when the car stalled out while driving would have anything to do with this?

Answer
I doubt it a stalling issue along with a no crank issue intermittant wouldn not be related I wouldn't think. If you have sa stalling issue with this that is whole nother can of worms on that engine. thare are multiple things that could cause a stall on that engine.