Hey all, I recently purchased an 87 TII and I love the car to death. When I picked it up it had a weird parasitic drain that I believe is from the alarm? I let the car sit for a couple weeks and now it isn't starting, I think it may be the starter, but I wanted to see if anyone else has experienced my issue before I get a new one. Basically, the car has power but when I go to start it I get one click and then everything dies. No lights, no SAFC, etc. I'm assuming this is a starter issue and I'll be pulling that tomorrow to get it checked, but it was running fine before I let it sit. I have tried attaching jumper cables and charging the battery outside of the car, but neither has gotten the car to start. I also would like to disable the factory alarm to keep the battery from draining while it sits. Thanks for your help!

 

try bypassing the clutch interlock switch.(look that up)
I am assuming you are starting it with the pedal pushed in.

 

Locate the starter cut relay which is near the main relay. The starter relay has only one plug with 4 wires. Two of these wires are Black/Green. One is thicker than the other, focus on the thicker B/G wire. With key to start the thick B/G wire should have voltage. If it does not the the interlock switch could be the cause of your problem as well as a poor battery connection.

 

Sound like either a super dead battery or a super crappy battery terminal.

If you turn the ignition on and things light up, then you go to start and you get click and all the lights go out, I'd bet money on bad battery terminals. A weak battery makes poor terminal connections even worse.

The factory alarm will drain a minute amount of current when armed which will kill your battery if you car sits for weeks undriven. You have 3 options...

1) Leave it hooked to a trickle charger (you should be doing this anyway)

2) Don't lock it. Alarm arms on lock.

3) For an 87-88 car, you can ground the Light Green/Black wire at the theft control unit behind the glove box. For an 89-91 car, you can ground Light Green/Black at the CPU in the driver kick panel.

 

Awesome guys, thanks for the tips! I'll give all this a shot over the next few days and let you know if it gets figured out.