Tacoma no crank, no start

This is the first time I have ever posted to any type of forum but I wanted to share my issue and solution to possibly help someone else in the same situation. After having my truck in the shop for 2 weeks with a brand new starter, brand new neutral safety switch and a stumped mechanic I decided to start researching online. Luckily I came across an older post with others having the same situation and almost every one of them ended up going to the dealership and having either ECM replaced or Main wiring harness replaced. Going to the dealership for a 15 year old truck with 215,000 miles on it wasn’t close to the top of my list.

Basically the truck (2007 tacoma 4.0L auto) was intermittently starting over the course of a few months, sometimes weeks in between having issues. Now when this would happen I would have full electronic power, it just wouldn’t crank at all, no clicks, no noise, just silence, also was giving a P0705 code . Eventually it would take 20-30 times turning the key for it to finally crank, I initially believed it was the starter since smacking on the starter seemed to do the trick, turns out I really did need a new starter but that was not the issue. After replacing the starter and solenoid the truck started 2 more times and that was it, didn’t start again without jumping starter. Also there was a delay in switching gears, would sometimes take 5 seconds or so before engaging from park to drive/etc. I was able to jump the starter with a piece of jumper wire and the truck would start flawlessly, so then I went into the rest of it, relays, ignition switch, Replaced the neutral safety switch after reading many forums, etc. Nothing fixed the issue. Finally I was able to find the solutions thanks to one users post. It ended up being the wiring harness that plugs into the neutral safety switch. Appearing fine from the exterior the plug itself had a lot of corrosion inside and the wire that connected the NSS to the starter relay was actually damaged inside the connector. After finding that, I decided to try to find a new harness, the dealership wanted $225, was able to find the exact match with attached pigtails for $30 on Amazon. Spliced, soldered, shrink wrap and she’s working like new. No shifting issues, no starting issues. Hopefully this helps someone

 

Thanks for the post, many ask for help but never reply with the fix, glad you're rolling.

 

Thanks for the post and welcome to TW.

 

Good to see someone taking the time with details of the resolution for reference. Glad it worked. Interesting (and good) the wiring harness took care of the shifting issues as well.

 

One of the top 5 best first posts ever!

Welcome!

 

Wow, find a new shop. I literally just looked at what my buddy paid for a diagnostic on his taco and after the laundry list of things they did and tested... a fuse was blown. I read all of your post but a few lines in my brain is screaming part hangers. It's 101 to check fuses, connections, plugs, voltage drop lines, a starter and all those parts should have never been hung. In fact, my other buddies nissan something, wouldn't get out of park, I was told the brake switch was bad and diagnosed by another shop. So I grabbed a switch from advance, headed over, tested his and it was perfectly fine, connections perfectly fine, battery has been dead so there's about 40 random nonsense codes that all just look like they tripped from a dead battery. Also, in the 5 min I spent googling the brake switch, you need to clear the codes to make it work.... I charged the battery up, cleared the codes, voila, goes into drive and has been since. Normally I wouldn't have grabbed a switch, but I figured it was cheap enough and he was far enough away I didn't want to make a return trip to buy one. Oddly it was $80 expensive, and advance won't take returns on electrical things I found out. But the guy I talked to on checkout told me to save the receipt, lucky they took it back. I normally steer clear of advance these days, but they were the only one that had it in stock.

Edit: My anecdotal nonsense story point is, start with the basics. More often than not, that's where the real problem is.

Edit 2: Also own a VW. You get real used to bad electrical issues. Something is always melted, shorted, or open, somewhere. Or any 90s GM car, yup the PCMs blow all the time. Don't worry about the always corroded grounds and when you actually test the wire it's no bueno. So chuck a new PCM in to fix it, until that extra restive load blows the fets in that PCM as well.

 

Welcome to tw.

Good job at finding that problem. Sometimes it takes patience, I have little. To counteract my lack of patience and the ability to become frustrated, if I have 3 things to fix, I'll always go at the hardest one first. Then when I become impatient, what's left to do is easy.

 

Just stood up to take this pic. https://imgur.com/a/SDSo4mX

 

NOW THATS A SOLID FIRST POST!

Congrats on figuring out that pain in the ass issue!