When I first got mine, I had to pull the gear shift to the side when I
cranked at the same time.  Cleaning the contacts did not help, BUT taking
off the conntact and flipping it over to a clean portion fixed it.  It has
been over a year and no probs.  Godd luck.
Michael in San Antonio
91GL AT 'Gringo'
73 Beetle

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 9:18 AM, Marc Perdue <mcperdue@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm constantly amazed at how many ways my van can leave me stranded,
> in spite of all I do to try to keep it in top shape.
>
> I got in my van to leave my daughters' house last night, and when I
> turned the key, the fuel pump came on, but there was no click for the
> starter.  This has actually happened on occasion before.  When it has,
> I usually moved the shifter out of Park and back.  If that didn't do
> it, trying another time or two always would.
>
> So, I'm thinking that there's a starter relay somewhere, but when it
> happened, it was 10 PM, my tools were in my other car, and my Bentley
> was on the kitchen counter back home, where I had been researching
> what I need to look at for the rough running problem that I had been
> having.  Incidentally, it's running WAY smoother since I had the shop
> adjust the valve last to 0, cold, according to Bob Donalds' specs.
> And it hasn't been stalling.
>
> Asides aside, I pulled the cover off the gear selector (auto tranny,
> in case you hadn't gotten that yet) and cleaned the switch.  In case
> anybody out there didn't realize it, the shifter needs to be either in
> Neutral or Park to start, and there's a switch in the gear selector
> enclosure.  You can pry off the top cover of the enclosure to get to
> it.  Cleaning the contacts didn't change my results.  Thinking maybe
> the Park contact only was affected, I tried starting in Neutral to no
> avail.
>
> At this point, not knowing whether there was a starter relay or
> whether I could do anything about it if I found it, I had to seek out
> a ride home.
>
> Am I on the right track?  Does this sound like a bad starter relay to
> you all?  Oh, and before you all suggest I go start chasing ground
> connection gremlins, the shop that was trying to fix my van checked,
> cleaned, and in some cases put new connectors on, ALL of my ground
> connections that they could find.  :^)  Um, come to think of it, they
> wouldn't have cleaned the contacts on the gear selector switch . . .
>
> If this does sound like a bad starter relay, does anyone have a part
> number for it?  I'd like to get my van back up and running sooner than
> later...
>
> Thanks all,
> Marc
>