Howdy.

Cant seem to find any mention of this on the forum, so here goes...

Start car after sitting for the night, drive to the gas station a few minutes down the road. Fuel up. Now the car wont start.... This only happens when it's cold. In the past, I've waited 5-10 minutes and it starts right up. This time i waited for over an hour, and eventually had it towed home.

When I turn the key, lights and gauges start fine. No starter sound. Nothing. If I was a betting man, I'd say it's electrical in nature (lord knows how fickle the electrics are in these rigs), but beyond that I'm clueless.

Of course, it could start up fine tomorrow morning too.

Anyone care to wager a guess or at least a place to start troubleshooting?

Thanks

 

check your connections on your battery down to the starter.

it may also be the NSS. do you have working reverse lights? that's a tell tale sign that the nss is faulty.
you can try wiggling the shifter in around the neutral position while holding the key in the start position to see if you get contact.

 

Good advice above from "caged". Try starting in neutral and try starting while wiggling the shifter.

Neutral safety switch failure is not uncommon.

But be darn sure that all electrical connections are super clean and tight for starters.

Swapping the starter relay in the power distribution center (black box on passenger side under the hood) is another quick and dirty thing you can try.

Good luck and keep us posted!

 

Success!

I wiggled the shifter in Neutral for a bit and it started right up. Add this to the growing list of quirks this car has.

Is this related to the NSS? What is the NSS exactly? Any thoughts?

Thanks so much.

 

I would say you can either try to live with it, though it may get to the point where wiggling doesn't fix it. Or, what I did was remove, disassemble, and clean the NSS. I haven't had a NSS starting problem for probably close to 4 years now.

 

The NSS is not a difficult or expensive repair. I say go buy a new one and forget about it.

 

Your options are either try to "refurbish" your NSS or buy a new one. I'd try this (below) procedure before buying a new one. It often works. And if this fails, don't cheap out and buy a no name NSS. They are total junk. Either get a new one or get one off a salvage yard XJ. Good luck!

http://bc4x4.com/tech/2010/jeep-neut...ty-switch-nss/

 

Fuel pump or new coil needed. Sounds like what my 94 was doing when I had it filled with gas. Had to drop full tank to change out pump. Not fun. The coil needed replacing in my 97 and that too would have it's issues. Bet it's one or both of these items. You have some sort of ignition problem.

 

Why do you say the cheaper ones are junk? I've never read a bad review about the one on 1A or ebay for that matter. Obviously OEM is the better option but those are literally like 400 bucks so that's not even an option really..

 

I had this same problem in the my 98 sport. I ended up needing a new starter. Ever since I swapped it out i've had no issues starting.

 

Rock Auto has the Mopar for $287 and Standard and Airtex for ~$190 each. I have had decent luck with Standard parts in the past. It's not as cheap as eBay, but at least you have a better idea of what you're getting.

 

Standard has been around for decades, and is usually good stuff. Of course they may be like most suppliers these days and farm out the switch to some Chinese outfit....