Hi y'all, brank spakin new to the fourm, with what is hopefully a easy issue to resolve.

Vehicle is a 1997 Montero SR 3.5L Automatic.

Ignition switch suddenly stopped doing its job. No relay click, nothing.

I did a short diagnostic and got as far as jumping the starter, and that works, and the only way to start it. I also shifted through the gears and it won't start in 'P' or 'N'.

From there I'm stumped on what to test. I don't want to throw a bunch of parts at it. So here I am.


Thanks in advance!

 

The ignition switchn is a fairly common failure item - as the start contacts eventually pit and burn out. It's easy to pull the bottom steering column cover and remove the white/black switch unit. (two screws) If you have a test lamp and or meter you can pretty easily test it. They are not expensive ($15 - $25) so you might also just swap it out regardless. I had two failures on my '99, one at around
100K and another around 200K miles.

 

Thank you jrmdir, that seems to have done the trick.

Just for fun, I took apart the switch, it had a nice pit where the 'start' nipple engages. After removing the switch assembly, I jumped the 'AM' positive, to the 'START' spade connector, and the started spun like a ice skater.

Put in the new switch, put it back together, bam.

I'm glad it worked out that easy, I hope this helps someone else as much as it has helped me.

Now if I can just find that damn key....



Thanks again!

 

Great - glad it helped. And thanks for adding to the knowledge base with the disassembly. After my 2nd failure I came to the conclusion there's a minor design flaw in that when the key is fully turned to the right, the start contact is only partlty overlapped by the rotating contact. So all the current flows through half the area.

I was going to suggest this yesterday but it would have been hard to describe unless you've seen the parts - but once that switch is released from the key assy, you can use a screwdriver to turn the rotor - and it probalby would have started once you got past the pitted area. In other words the switch rotor has more room to rotate than allowed by the key.

I was lucky both times in that before they died completly they started "buzzing" intermittently while attempting to start. Turns out the buzzing was from the arcing - which created more pitting - then more arcing, etc.

Cheers,

Ron