Hello again Tim and others,

It has been a few days, and we have made a little headway. First I should mention, though, that I made a mistake when I posted the original thread title. The engine in our van is a 1991, but the van itself is actually the 1993 model. I often forget that when I am troubleshooting and I forget that everything but the engine would still be from 1993. I hope that doesn't mess up any of the suggestions you gave in your previous posts. Anyhow, back to the problem.

I haven't been extremely systematic about verifying this, but it has seemed this week that the van starts best when completely cold. First thing in the morning or if it hasn't been driven for 5+ hours, I think it has started without fail. However, once it has been driven for the day and parked for 1-4 hours, that is when the clicking seems to return most frequently, if not always. The few times we've turned the car off and then immediately back on, though (which we have tried stopped doing), it has been about 50/50. Anyhow, that may be completely irrelevant. But your most recent post about connections being good until a load is applied made me wonder if warmer or colder wires might be more or less conducive to keeping a good connection.

Following your advice, I check both the ignition switch and the neutral start switch with a voltmeter. The difference between the "in" and "out" wire voltages on the ignition switch was about .2 volts, and both were over 11 volts when they key was turned. After I got everything together, the car was still just clicking. Good! I could do more testing. So I found the neutral start switch and unplugged it to make sure it looked shiny (and to figure out where positions 2 and 3 were). I don't know how shiny it was, as everything down there is dark and dusty and cramped, but tried to blow a little. Once I plugged it back in, the car started and began to start almost every time after that, and whenever it didn't it was when we weren't at home (the car had warmed up) so I couldn't test. Finally, it clicked again out in the middle of nowhere and I had my voltmeter with me so I checked the neutral start switch and the "in" wire read 11.50 volts and the "out" wire 11.28 volts while cranking/("clicking"). This brought relief (the $225 part seemed ok) and frustration (what now?). So I took the voltmeter to the other side of the car and unplugged the plastic clip. I stuck the voltmeter inside of the plastic clip and had my wife crank again. It clicked, and she held it for a long time (~3+ minutes) while I tried to get the (digital) meter to hold still. It was all over the place! Most of the time it would just show 0.00, so I thought I had a bad ground. But every few seconds it would flash, briefly, low voltages like 4 or 8, and then go back to 0. Once or twice it even flashed 12 volts, but for less than a second every time. The flashes would occur when I wasn't moving the ground around at all, just holding it steady inside of an empty threaded hole on the frame. The positive end that I had inside of the clip was held there by itself, as it seemed to fit nicely and tightly into the two tiny, thin metal plates that curve around.

So my guess is that the clip or the wiring is bad somewhere between the transmission and the starter. This actually wouldn't surprise me too much since, like I said, the engine has been replaced twice in the last year, so everything has been unplugged and bend around to remove/install them. Next time I get a chance, I will test the wire right behind the plastic clip. If it reads 11+ volts there, I will assume that the clip itself is bad, and I can just replace that. Otherwise, would it be possible to just run a second wire from the "out" pin on the neutral start switch to the starter clip? Would that bypass any safety features? Would it be safe? Otherwise, how difficult is it to replace the bundled wiring that stretches from transmission to starter?

Thank you very much for your help. I should have time this weekend to hopefully put an end to this problem. I'll be sure and report back on anything else I find.

Tyson