Clutch Safety Switch Replacement / No Start Issue

Well, hopefully it doesn't seem like my car has been falling apart recently with all of my posts here recently are about some issue with my car. She really has been driving very well for quite some time, and not until the last couple of weeks have I had a couple of issues crop up.

Anyway, the car had been driving and starting just fine two weeks ago and after spending the night at a friends house, I went to start my car last Saturday morning...and nothing.

The lights, door locks, stereo, all accessories seemed to be working just fine (no multimeter to check voltages anywhere) and when I turned the key I would get nothing. Once I started paying closer attention to what was going on, I could her a click of some kind from what sounded like the starter.

I have not had any issues with the starter before, so I figured it might have something to do with the clutch safety switch. As I didn't have any tools with me, I tried to push start the car again to see if she would fire up, and sure enough, she did, and threw no codes.

I got the car home and she drove just fine with no noticeable driveability issues. I parked the car and let it sit. The next morning I tried to start the car, and same thing.

I then let the car sit all week and drove my e36 M3 to work while I devised some kind of plan of attack to get the ZHP back up and running.

Fastforward to yesterday, the weather was nice enough to actually want to do something outside, and checked the battery voltage which was sitting aroudn 12.1/12.2V so that ruled out a dead battery.

For the hell of it, I jumped in and the car fired right up with 0 hesitation.

To me, this makes the situation worse as I now have a car that will randomly not start and also decide when it will want to start on its own.

I looked into the clutch safety switch on a few other forums and found a mod you can do to the wiring to bypass the switch, but I ended up getting a new switch for $33 (oem BMW) to try out when it arrives in the mail.

Any suggestions on ways to test voltage at the starter? To me, it seems like all electronics are working fine, but the issue could be somewhere in the clutch safety switch, starter solenoid, or the starter itself.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Andrew

If the clutch switch doesn't fix it, I think there is a horn relay that is the same as your starter, and I think some swap it to test?

You can also code the car to bypass the switch altogether, if need be. BP did this for me at the last family reunion so I could install the UUC Big Boy clutch stop. Without the bypass on startup, I couldn't get the clutch stop to function properly for startup.

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I installed a hidden switch on mine when I started having issues with it. Figured it was also just one more thing a potential thief would have to figure out in order to steal it. Although not really a big deterrent but was a simple fix that was less than buying a new one.

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