problems

[Mizery]

check the little wire fuses under the hood close to the driver side shock tower. its a brown box with three wires in it. i know they are very thin and if you are running anything in your car that would draw alot of power it could burn one of those litte wires up. i know whne i burned my main fuse wire out when i did the b6t sawp before i used the capri fuse box my car woulnt start no lights no power what so ever in the cap or anyw here else. if this fixes your problem let me know. id like to know if i helped in any way.


i know you just said you checked it and it wasnt blown. but thats what i thouight to at first. until i took a closer look and saw that it was corroded and barley connected. after i replaced the wires 3 times i then replaced the entire box with teh capris

[damien]

its not corroded. i just checked. um i noticed though that the three wires going in to that lil box had one blue one running out and it wasnt connected to anything. is that a problem??

[damien]

should i try replacing those three wires??

[Pu241]

should i try replacing those three wires??

That's what Simontuffguy was getting at!
If those are "smoked" it not readily visable.
That's why the talk and link to the cartridge fuses.
Hopefully we can find a pic and all will be explained!
Till then, you can use a old flash light as a continuity tester.
The kind that the back un-screws then use the red and brown fusable link to complete the connection to the bottom of the battery and switch conductor.
ligtt come on then fusable link OK, light no go "bad" fusable link!

[gottafesty]

Definately sounds like bad connections at the batter terminals or at the starter. But if those have checked out okay, then I'm at a loss. Could it be a bad starter?

edit: Just realized I missed reading a whole page of this discussion. ops:

[damien]

how do i check that??

[damien]

alright i checked the starter and it works, i got the new female piece in and nothing. im still looking at the lil box with the three wires, theirs one running out of it leading nowhere, is that a problem??

[Pu241]

alright i checked the starter and it works, i got the new female piece in and nothing. im still looking at the lil box with the three wires, theirs one running out of it leading nowhere, is that a problem??

Ok, so we know the starter is good!
Possible solenoid is bad!
Or some other electrical connection will not let solenoid get juice.

The blue wire runing out to nowhere shouldn't be and issue, but I'd remove it or at least cap it so that it doesn't ground out on you!
Probably left over from a PO who needed to power something!

[Icedawg]

How about the battery terminals themselves? I had a similar problem on my MX3, checked the battery connections and they were tight and looked OK. But the shop I took it to took them apart, cleaned then and put it back together and it's worked for another two years now.

Not so sure about the blue wire. Trouble is I have B6T, and the spare blue wire on that one was critical to making it work, but I am not so familiar with the stock festi wiring. But a search of the Haynes wiring diagrams shows no solid blue wire, so it may just be an extra lead as Pu man suggests.
As someone else said, if the fusible links on the shock tower are blown you may not know from looking, you would need a voltmeter or ohmmeter. (But you don't have one, I know.) Perhaps you should try swapping them? It will turn off some other part of your electrical system, but would make the starter work again. For instance one of them powers the headlights I believe. So you could see if swapping them all sequentially turns off the headlights and you would know it is blown.
You do still have to worry about whether the starter solenoid is working, even if the starter itself is.

Have you checked the fuse panel inside the car? Since you have some weirdness with the internal lights and brakes it could be something has blown there too.

[SimonTuffGuy]

http://www.fordfestiva.com/forums/showthread.php?p=143954#post143954

Go to your local autoparts store and get 3 fuses... The 2 sides are blue, the middle is pink (blue are 20A's and the pink is 30A)...

Pull out those dumb wired links (in the brown box) and replace them with the fuses you just bought.

You car should start.