1990 YJ coil, voltage, ICU, something ISSUES

My only concern with using the old school type solenoid, is that my starter has one already on it. I think that's why I have the starter relay,,,,,if you zoom in on the 3rd pic from above you can kinda see it on the side of the starter , but I will get a good pic when I get home . Maybe Im just seeing something wrong.

 

I was reading about the relay. The relay delays the signal to the starter to reduce kickback from the engine making it easier for the starter to do its job. My thought is that one of the wires on the relay may come from the ecm and the wire going to the ecm from the ignition switch needs to be rerouted (guessing here) I don't have a wiring diagram for a 90yj. Only pre 80 CJ and 94YJ. I was reading elsewhere that it looks like some of the wiring of the nutter bypass may still be necessary because the wires pass through the ecm to other areas. When you were trying to start and only getting a click, was the ecm unplugged?

 

Not yet, probably won't get to that till tomorrow, just got off a day shift then going back in at midnight so I'm going to try to grab some sleep. But I'm going to snip some zip ties and retrace the green wire to see if it goes anywhere near the ECM. The yellow I know splices to the ECM wires but is also a clean line to the fuse box. And gets good voltage ( switched) . I was trying to figure out what part the NUTTER could play in this but all the bypass does is bypass the ECM . All the other stuff is simply GONE. I'll dig into my wiring a bit and see what I see, I'm sure it's nothing to drastic, just something I'm missing.
Thanks for all your input so far. Funny no one else has chimed in at all....like we're the only people running 258s and trying to make them run right HAHAHA

 

Yep. It took me a year to figure out all the idiosyncrasies of my 258 and I have no ecm. If I had one like yours Id find away to take it back old school like your doing. I believe your green wire does go through the ecm. You can pull it straight from the tach to the distributor bypassing the ecm. It should not affect how it runs though. I have been forgetting to take pictures of how mine is set up. Ill do it when I get home and post. You will have to ignore my nest of wires. Too many projects going and haven't had time to clean it up much.

 

I cut the plug that comes off the firewall and to the ignition control module. This red wire white trailer is the main switched hot. It is about an 8 or 10G wire. Spliced it to the Red wire/white trailer leading from the control module, at this splice I tied into it with my own thick gauge solid red wire and ran this to my distributor. (picture to follow)

 

This is my solid red wire coming from previously mentioned splice and leads to the 12v positive wire to the distributor. Also in this picture is my green wire that leads from the distributor to the tach.

 

So, small devlopement after checking voltage at the green wire on my starter relay and got power on start key turn i removed ALL wires from the relay and jumped the green and red and was able to get it to turn over on key turn. Oddly enough did not seem to have spark, i tested post 1 and turned it over for about 10 seconds and got no reading, but that's a shaky reading.

So this is the run down as it stands

I have a solid 10ga (yellow) plugged directly into my IGN switched port on my fuse box in the tub that runs directly to my HEI.
I have a 18-16 ga (green /White) running from the drivers side firewall penetration Tach , it splices with (G/W) from the ECM bundle and continues to the diag harness beside the battery, and my tach port on the HEI
At my starter relay:
I have 8ga (red) to my battery post
I have 16 ga (yellow) switched splices to ALL yellow switched power ; ECM ,diagnostics harness ,automatic choke ,(brown) from ALT harness
I have 10ga (green) switched at START key turn splices to; ECM , Diagnostic harness running from firewall penetration and I imagine the ignition switch
I have 10ga (red) running to my SOLENOID on my starter

I must say I HATE electrical issues, I dont know how to read schematics and old wire with a multitude of random most likely obsolete wiring irritates me to no end.

ECM removal aside (FOR THE MOMENT) what about the 2 relays mounted beside the battery? And the CHIP? For lack of better term.

I have traced all the wire from ALL the harnesses ,relays and CHIP located beside the battery, the diag. harnesses mainly go to the ECM, the Relays mostly to the various sensors on the intake manifold ( likely powering them all ) , and the CHIP ;ECM, manifold sensor, and firewall.

With the system I am now running I should be able to simplify all this rats nest by a great deal by just removing the ECM, I am just a bit leery of just TEARING it out hahahah, putting it back in would seriously suck if that were the end result.
BUT ....NO GUTS NO GLORY.....

Ok so this is a long post but oh well.... ECM completely removed. All wires verified as whole and conductive. New clean splices etc....

12 volts switched ,direct to HEI from fuse box
Tach wire direct from firewall to tach on HEI

Starter relay as pictured:

Battery on post
Switched 12v ( yellow )
Start key turn 12 v (Green)
Starter solenoid (red)

On key turn green gets 12v and post that (red) (with wire disconnected) is on gets 12v
If I attach the red solenoid wire ,on key turn it drops to less than 1v at the post and at the starter.

Seems that this would lend to the starter relay being bad , but i switched back to my old one ,which was working fine and it did not fix the problem.
I dont believe the starter relay was ever wired to the ECM so cant see that removing it or cutting anything would cause this issue.

I do wonder the purpose of the 12v switched power to the starter relay if when I start key turn ,the green gets 12v from the ignition switch not the relay.
And actually why the battery connection either.

Ok that's all for now, hopefully all this new info will spark something,,,,pun totally intended

 

Izaak, I sent you a private message with my number.

 

Off Grid in your second pic which included a shot of your HEI it shows a two wire pigtail coming out of it but I can't quite see the other connection from distributor innerds to the cap connector, is that a three wire connection and then two out? The HEI I got from ya'lls suggestions on here came with a three wire out of the dist. body and plugged into the cap connection. I purchased the pig tail you suggested which is a two wire, OEM connector with two unterminated wires. I was wondering is this a way to transform the three wires down to just two? Like 1 for the 12v power and one for the tach? if so what is the third wire in the equation for?, thats if you know! I will also be attempting this ECM elimination experiment sometime next week hopefully. Would love to just go totally old school with just no electronics of any kind except for the HEI.....from what the other guy your advising is going through sounds like were having pipe dreams with it. From what I've read on this and other forums the so called nutter bypass is a misnomer as it seems this procedure doesn't actually by pass the ECM completely. By the way this is the link that I tried to share with Izaak on the guy that had similar problems with no key start but able to jump the solenoid and crank.......https://www.jeeps.net/threads/ignition-problem.560/ He indicated he might like to read it. Thanks for the assistance and good luck to all on their Jeep Mods!!!

 

The HEI I suggested is a single wire distributor, meaning you only have to hook a hot wire up to it to make it work. The other wire is the tach. The wires you mention in the back go from the stator to the coil on top. The Coil send power to the stator which then disperses it to the plugs via the cap and rotor. I believe those 3 wires from the stator have a 1 plug with 3 across connetors that plug in behind the the tach and hot wire. You can get to old school. Just have to figure our where you need to get power to the starter relay and what kind of power be it cranking power, switched power and constant power.

 

Be advised I downloaded a 89 jeep shop service manual in pdf format that allows page printing and cd rom burning and from just glancing thru it appears to have some detailed diagrams of all systems, wiring etc. All appear to be detailed and with plenty of diagrams exploded views schematics and pictures so let me know if there is a need and I'll do my best to get you what you need. Not exactly a computer expert but I'm sure transfer of these things can be worked out with some help!

 

I believe you can copy and paste images like I did the one above. I have a 94 manual at my dads shop. I'm going to get it tonight (a good drive) so I can try to help ya'll better.

 

I found this using an old school starter relay/solenoid and how to tie it in to a newer system.

 

Is your relay labeled like this?

 

From what I can find it should be wired like this

 

this is where the wire goes from the relay.

 

Hey Off, sorry yesterday kinda went off road over a cliff but, damn youve been busy. Thank you .

So yes your draeings are EXACTLY what i have going on. Just realized ,epiphany moment that the green wire is not ground its the ignition wire. Not sure why i have seitched power AND ignition power.
So im putting a GROUND wire on now

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH....ALL THIS NONSENSE AND THAT WAS THE ISSUE. the odd part is that i wired it EXACTLY as it had been when it worked.

Ok now to try to make it RUN

 

SUCCESSSSSSSS WHOOP WHOOP. DOING MY HAPPY DANCE...

HEI INSTALLED...OLD CRAP IGNITION REMOVED.
ECM REMOVED COMPLETELY

Now for fine tuning...and one slight hiccup. It only starts on the let off... which was an issue before and i had had the coil wires ;POS- TACH reversed some how. And by switching them it solved the problem , but NOW the distributor is maked CLEARLY SO ........

THANKS TO OFFGRID FOR HIS ABUNDANCE OF HELP. AND GOOD LUCK TO Dbarlow on his conversion.

 

Tried to post video. But no dice. Ill take a few more pics once its all buttoned up.

THANKS AGAIN OFFGRID