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So my new to me 2003 CL-S 6 speed started acting strange right off the bat. Maybe why the car was on the market. Stalled while idling and then wouldn't fire up. Cranked but no start. Then, after about ten minutes, looong crank and then fired up. On and off same symptoms until today when it flat out wouldn't start. Cranked fine. Read up on the Main Relay and it sounded like the culprit. Tried to get it out of the car to look it over but couldn't get it free from the bracket. Removed the 10mm bolt that holds the bracket to the sheet metal under the dash and had the relay in my hand. Opened it up so I could see the internals and both contact sets triggered when I cranked. Took the relay to the bench and shoved a tiny thin screwdriver in between the contacts to scuff them up a bit and reinstalled the relay. Fired right up. New relay on the way. Here are some pics of what I found.
You can clearly see the points in this pic. These are the ones I suspect of not making good contact. They looked old and corroded under a magnifying glass.
Here are the second set of points. Harder to get at but I was able to scuff them up a little.
Solder joints all looked good.
And here's a pic of the bracket that came out easily. I unplugged the clutch switch connector to get a better shot at the 10mm bolt. Would have been very hard to release the relay from the bracket not knowing how that locking tab was configured. And it was tight as hell even working with it on the bench.
I'd like to do some research to see which wires and supposed to link up to which when the relay triggers. Might make it easy for someone to jump the relay in a pinch of they were having starting issues. My new relay is on its way.
nice pics . hope you went OEM on the relay. a lot of others try to go otherwise and end up finding out that some things like this you just can't go cheap on.
nice pics . hope you went OEM on the relay. a lot of others try to go otherwise and end up finding out that some things like this you just can't go cheap on.
