I'm soooo glad to have found this site!! My cutlass has been so reliable for years and then all of a sudden I comee out the mall, try to start my car and nothing happened. My starter is only months old and the battery and alt have been checked. I bought a new ignition switch(on the column) and neutral switch, and it still does nothing. The one thing that confuses me is the purple wire to the neutral switch gets hot when i repeatedly try to start my car. I'm stumped.

 

Welcome aboard

Hang in there the Electrical experts are on their lunch break.

 

If you turned the key and nothing happened then I would remove the starter and have it checked on a bench. If the starter checks out then you need to make sure you have 12V ignition at the purple wire going to the starter solenoid. If you don't have 12V ignition on the starter solenoid then trace the purple wire back to the firewall and find out why it isn't getting to your starter solenoid.

 

thanks 4 the help. One more question. I put my colunmn back up, thinking I had solved the problem with the neutral switch, and had a hard time shifting gears with the key turned on. But when I turn the key back it would shift back to park with no problem.