Hi,
Been through this a couple of times with my 88 which has developed a few rust problems. Water dripping through the seam on the passenger side windshield pillar runs down the inside of the passenger kick panel (to the right of the passenger's feet) and drips right on the circuit opening relay - which, if mounted with wires pointing upwards, happily grabs some water and fills up and then rusts and ruins your day.
Symptoms were, truck sat up for a while during rainy weather, tried to start and cranked but no start. Starting fluid forced a start but immediately died. I couldn't hear fuel hissing at the fuel rail with key on so I bypassed the relay and forced the fuel pump to run by taking a paper clip and jumped the "Fp" and "B+" contacts in the diagnostic connector on the firewall. Truck fired right up and ran with jumper in place.
For those who have a similar problem to mine and don't want to drop $100 bucks on a relay, my relay seems to have been pretty robust and can be re-born with a little determined cleaning and sanding\wire brushing of the contact points and solder joints. Your mileage may vary but this has now worked for me 3 times. The basics are to remove the passenger side kick panel by first removing the door threshold strip that holds down your carpet, then remove the door sill hard cover and the two Phillips head screws for the plastic kick panel. Identify the relay (mine had a distinctly yellow plug and has CIRCUIT OPEN clearly printed on the relay cover) and remove with a 10mm socket. Open the relay by prying open both sides of the black plastic cover, each having 2 plastic clips, and remove the relay from the housing. In my case, it was full of rusty water! I actually rinsed mine off under the faucet (figured what the hell), dried with a blow dryer, and then set about with the dremel tool and some sand paper and CAREFULLY cleaned every speck of rust I could get too. Most importantly, I took a small strip of sandpaper and sanded the contact points (both sides) and then plugged back in without the cover to test. Voila, truck fired up and ran like a 30 year old truck with 250K should.
See pics below to help identify parts and locations. Good luck!
Been through this a couple of times with my 88 which has developed a few rust problems. Water dripping through the seam on the passenger side windshield pillar runs down the inside of the passenger kick panel (to the right of the passenger's feet) and drips right on the circuit opening relay - which, if mounted with wires pointing upwards, happily grabs some water and fills up and then rusts and ruins your day.
Symptoms were, truck sat up for a while during rainy weather, tried to start and cranked but no start. Starting fluid forced a start but immediately died. I couldn't hear fuel hissing at the fuel rail with key on so I bypassed the relay and forced the fuel pump to run by taking a paper clip and jumped the "Fp" and "B+" contacts in the diagnostic connector on the firewall. Truck fired right up and ran with jumper in place.
For those who have a similar problem to mine and don't want to drop $100 bucks on a relay, my relay seems to have been pretty robust and can be re-born with a little determined cleaning and sanding\wire brushing of the contact points and solder joints. Your mileage may vary but this has now worked for me 3 times. The basics are to remove the passenger side kick panel by first removing the door threshold strip that holds down your carpet, then remove the door sill hard cover and the two Phillips head screws for the plastic kick panel. Identify the relay (mine had a distinctly yellow plug and has CIRCUIT OPEN clearly printed on the relay cover) and remove with a 10mm socket. Open the relay by prying open both sides of the black plastic cover, each having 2 plastic clips, and remove the relay from the housing. In my case, it was full of rusty water! I actually rinsed mine off under the faucet (figured what the hell), dried with a blow dryer, and then set about with the dremel tool and some sand paper and CAREFULLY cleaned every speck of rust I could get too. Most importantly, I took a small strip of sandpaper and sanded the contact points (both sides) and then plugged back in without the cover to test. Voila, truck fired up and ran like a 30 year old truck with 250K should.
See pics below to help identify parts and locations. Good luck!
