My daughter's Maxima all of the sudden would not start one morning. Engine would turn over, but not ignite. I first started troubleshooting the spark, knowing the gas would be prevented from flowing unless spark was present. No spark was present. I found the engine control relay not energizing. If I removed the relay and jumpered across the terminals of the relay socket associated with the relay contacts, the engine would start fine.
Bad Engine Control Relay, right??? Wrong!!! New relay has the same problem.
If I removed the relay from the socket and 'jumpered' the coil terminals directly from the battery, the relay would actuate the contacts perfectly. Battery voltage was 11.9 VDC. I measured the incoming relay coil voltage as being 10.9VDC across the coil terminals of the relay socket.
Would a 1VDC voltage drop be enough to prevent the relay from actuating?? I didn't think so. Is there some thing else in this wiring circuit which could be acting as a reisistor and preventing the full battery voltage from getting to the relay coil?
Is it possibly a bad ground connection to the relay coil ground? I was thinking that the problem was here. I was going to run a test with the relay removed from the socket, tieing the powered side of the relay coil directly to the relay socket terminal and connect the ground side of the relay coil directly to the battery negative terminal to check if the relay socket coil ground terminal is the problem.
I can't get me hands onto a 'good' wiring diagram for this circuit and the Nissan dealers aren't providing any help, saying I need to bring the car in, to let 'their people' work on it. Hell, I can get the car to run by connecting a jumper to a toggle switch to the relay contact socket terminals, but don't feel comfortable with my daughter running it that way.
Any thoughts?