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Hey all, this has really gotten my gourd

Since yesterday evening I have not been able to get my car to start and am kinda at a dead end as far as my knowledge/experience has taken me
I suspect some sort of electrical short or voltage drop
My symptoms are:

• Lights/Dome/Dash all light up in accessory position
• When attempting to crank, I hear a click and all the lights go out with no cranking and after no lights will come on (I can eventually get them to come back on by waiting long enough, or sometimes when I remove the battery terminals

Thus far I have tried and checked

• Jumping the car with two different vehicles
• I tested both the battery and starter at the parts store and both were good
• Checked voltage between the positive post of the starter and the positive of the battery
• Attempted to check solenoid wiring
• Checked Ignition fuse

I need to check and verify good grounding - my father and I (E&I Technician) attempted to check for ground and it seemed fine but I'm not 100% on that
I am planning on replacing the ignition switch, if anyone knows how to test this I appreciate advice
I'm not sure if the immobilizer comes into play with this at all, the key is original but maybe it's not reading right and is switching off the power?

2005 Honda Civic LX 1.7L Non-VTEC 4 Speed Automatic

 
Rep Power: 367

• the starter test, did you remove it and take to the parts store? the solenoid is not stuck?
• are you ground cables OK and connected? I think there were about 3 of them?
• what voltage are you getting from battery? Were the other 2 cars running when you tried to jump?

 
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I'm going to guess bad starter/trigger wire

 
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Yeah, took it to the parts store and tested it and it ran just fine. I need to trace/check the ground wires then and make sure they look good, check for any corrosion.
Battery is sitting at 12.6v

 
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Is that the wire that goes into the solenoid and pushes down onto a connector? I think we were trying to test but couldn't check for voltage since the power died so quick.

 
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Probably not the issue, but have you tried to turn the transmission's flywheel manually to make sure it's not stuck?

 
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yeah the small wire on the starter

 
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I've gotten back to testing it.
I figured out that the electicals stay on if that wire is disconnected.
When I try to crank it It's getting 12v on the wire but it looks like .400 something Mega Ohms resistance if I'm reading this right. I don't have the book with the wiring diagram on me so can't really back trace it right now.

 
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TL;DR: POS terminal wasn't tightened to wires well, got it running, big dumb idiot
Yeah I'm a big old idiot. I verified that the ground weren't shared and was thinking to check the hot voltage after failure down the line and went to test it again and got it running. There's a whole stupid story to the thing but long story short

Tried to replace the ignition switch and managed to lockup the cylinderCould turn it over with the key in ignition & turning switch w/ screwdriver
After removing/retightening positive terminal I came back the next day and it started up nice as you like

Yeah - the freaking positive terminal must not have been tight enough, it's one of those that you bolt down a clamp thing


One of these

I feel like such an idiot. I even considered replacing them when this all began but that seemed to easy or hopeful so I didn't play with them.

 
Rep Power: 126

Easy to overlook the simple things. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Happens all the time. Just be happy you got it figured out, big dumb idiot. Haha

 
Rep Power: 222

Yeah those clamps are crap, glad you found the issue