Hello all. First off my ankle is broken and I am in a cast up to my knee so this has been extra difficult to deal with.

I did the Heim Joint mod to my ZF-5 clutch. It was working great but the heim joint as well as the swing arm loosed up and the throw rod was not engaging the clutch safety switch and the truck would not start because the truck thought the clutch was not engaged. I tightened up the heim joint on the clutch rod as well as the swing arm and replaced the clutch safety switch and everything worked fine for awhile. Then one day I hopped in my truck and it would not start, same exact issue as before. I unplugged the clutch safety switch again, I jumped the wires with a paper clip (To bypass the switch entirely) *SEE PICTURE BELOW* and still would not start. I became frustrated and went inside, came back out, worked on it some more and after moving some of the wires around and BAM the truck started right up. I am not sure what I did to make it work again. I plugged everything back in and it has been working for a week now. Was at a drive thru yesterday and I shut off the truck to order food, would not start again, GREAT! Then by some miracle I shook some wires and got it started and made it home. When I shut off in driveway it would not start again and has not started since.....now today I tried again and tried jumping them and no luck. I hooked up a multi-meter and I got 12V across the two terminals when I turned the key so there is obviously a connection. I shook the wires up stream of the plug to see if it was a loose connection, read the voltage again across the two wires and now it was only 2V and would go down to zero fast. I am stumped. I hope someone can help me, I am limited with my broken ankle at the moment but can still do some work but am trying to avoid too much of it if needed.

Below you can see the plug that goes to the clutch safety switch. The wires do the following (LEFT To right). Cream w/ red stripe and red w/blue stripe control if the truck starts or not. If a connection is made then the truck knows clutch is depressed and it will start.
The Yellow/blue stripe and white wires control the cruise control, if clutch is depressed then the cruise shuts off


This is a picture of the throw rod with the clutch safety switch, which I am pointing to. The above plug goes into there, when the clutch is depressed it makes a connection.


I cut off the female terminal tips to replace them as they got a little destroyed when I took them out. Better look at wires


This is where all four wires go to, up behind the steering column. After that not sure where they go.

 

Jump those two still in the grey plug. Then connect those two correctly, not with a rusted pair of alligator clips. Your problems should vanish.

If not, either you have a clapped out ignition switch or solenoid dying on inner fender, provided nothing else has changed.

 

The issue was they were all connected correctly in the clutch saftey switch and it was not working. I was only using the allogator clips to connect the multimeter to test the circut since ankle is broken. I used a barrel connector to complete the circut correctly. I'm not sure what jumping the two farthest wires would do as that just has stuff to do with cruise control.

I think it may be the starter relay as suggested. Will troubleshoot system and report back. I was focusing on the clutch switch because that was the last thing I messed with, the relay could of just gone out and it was a coincidence.

 

Yah, having working cruise is nice. That is why you jump the other two. You could have had a clapped out clutch switch easily.

Go with a Motorcraft solenoid for the fender. I have had crap luck with aftermarkets.

 

Troubleshooting the starter relay on the fender is easy, even with a broken ankle. Look at the picture below and you will see one wire unplugged, that is the trigger wire and it goes to 12 volts when cranking. Unplug it and with a jumper wire jump the screw type terminal to battery plus. If the truck cranks then the relay is good. Please make sure the brake is on and transmission is in neutral and don't run over yourself. No key in ignition is required for this test.

 

You are right it was easy. My head was in the wrong place do to my issue with the clutch safety switch. The stater solenoid failing was just a coincidence and turned out to be the issue. I ordered on off of amazon and it has been installed and all is good. I did do that test you mentioned @Hussler. However the truck did start with the old relay. However the truck would randomly not start at one point and I hit the relay with a hammer and low and behold it started again. It was a junk no name brand solenoid that the previous owner installed. Hoping the Motorcraft will last longer. Thank you for the help