I posted earlier. I believe that somehow my starter disable feature has been kicked in on my 1998 Saturn. I pulled out of my garage with nothing unusual about the way the car started. I suddenly stopped and turned the car off in the driveway because I had left something in the garage. When I returned to the car, put the key in the ignition to start it again, the bells and lights went on, but the engine did not respond in any way. This disable feature interrupts the processes of some necessary components which start the car, such as the fuel pump or starter. Perhaps the battery. I want to make sure that some mechanic doesn’t have me replacing all these things when somehow this system got tripped. Is there a way to get around this factory installed feature? (Like taking the battery out and putting it back in or something…) Our battery is fairly new in the car. Thanks.
By the way, it does not take a jump. The roadside assistance guy said that the battery is not accepting a charge.
Hi again,
My Saturn would ping the bell and flash the lights (all of them) on and off if the ignition kill were active and you tried to start the car. If the difficulty was something else, the bell wouldn’t sound and the lights (headlamps, overhead inside light, dash lights, etc) would not flash - the car simply wouldn’t start. Which it would do sometimes. I found that turning the wheel slightly one way or the other and trying again did the trick - started right up. I believe (and it was suggested to me) that something in the ignition was starting to go; sometimes I would hit the remote button to disable the ignition kill and start the car, only to find it would not start - no click, no trying to turn over, the key would turn and that was it. I’d try time after time but until I turned the steering wheel a bit to the left, no go - and a turn of the wheel later it fired right up like nothing was wrong.
I forgot to add - the point of the ignition kill was that it arms itself automatically after a minute (60 seconds). So if you wait longer than that to start it will arm the ignition kill again and you have to disarm it. If it is armed in less time than that, or all the time, something is definitely wrong. But it shouldn’t interfere in normal operation unless armed.
And now the light clicks on - if you are talking about the starter immobilizer that requires a particular key with a chip in order to start the car? I’ve been talking about something different. My Saturn did not have this but had an ignition kill instead of an alarm that worked off the remote. I don’t know when they started chipping keys, but that’s a different thing than what I’m talking about.