97 Blazer dies

My 97 Blazer would die briefly when driving down the highway. Sometimes it would re-start on its own (and sometimes not). No fault codes.

I noticed that some of these outages were accompanied by a change in dash lights and I observed the Airbag light flashing for a couple of seconds after the outage - similar to what happens immediately after you turn the ignition key on.

I also noticed that sometimes when I went to start the car, after I turned the key on (but before I started cranking), there would be a couple second delay before the dash lights would turn on (coincident with the sound of a relay click).

After searching the forum, I saw that several people had luck changing the ignition switch or cleaning the contacts on the ignition harness for similar symptoms.

I bought the ignition switch (comes with wire harness) at Autozone for $90 and my brother helped me put it in. It took about 2.5 hours (mostly because of the small reverse torx screws on the ignition switch that we didn't have a socket for). We ended up using needle nose vise grips, but access to the upper screw is not good so it took some fiddling with. Buy a 3 mm socket before you start the job.

Bottom line is - it's been a week and there have been no more issues - so I'm pretty sure it's fixed. I didn't see anything on the connector end of the harness that would indicate that cleaning the contacts would do any good - so I think the problem is internal to the switch itself.

I thought I would post this in case anyone else is having this type of problem - pay attention to the symptoms on the dash, and if they are similar, it's probably your ignition switch.

I had called my trusted mechanic and he wanted to start with the simple stuff - tune up, cap, rotor, etc. which would have probably cost me $200 without fixing the problem. (it's like he wasn't even listining when I described the symptom!).

Good luck - DC

Ah, yet another happy 1997 ignition switch fix.

Glad to see it helped.

But also, you should do a tuneup anyways if it has never been done.

Good job!

I would look for a new mechanic, sounds like he is one of those people who think similar problems always have the same solution. A good mechanic will look for the problem before starting to throw parts at it. He will end up costing you a lot of money on unneccessary repairs one day.

My 97 Blazer would die briefly when driving down the highway. Sometimes it would re-start on its own (and sometimes not). No fault codes.

I noticed that some of these outages were accompanied by a change in dash lights and I observed the Airbag light flashing for a couple of seconds after the outage - similar to what happens immediately after you turn the ignition key on.

I also noticed that sometimes when I went to start the car, after I turned the key on (but before I started cranking), there would be a couple second delay before the dash lights would turn on (coincident with the sound of a relay click).

After searching the forum, I saw that several people had luck changing the ignition switch or cleaning the contacts on the ignition harness for similar symptoms.

I bought the ignition switch (comes with wire harness) at Autozone for $90 and my brother helped me put it in. It took about 2.5 hours (mostly because of the small reverse torx screws on the ignition switch that we didn't have a socket for). We ended up using needle nose vise grips, but access to the upper screw is not good so it took some fiddling with. Buy a 3 mm socket before you start the job.

Bottom line is - it's been a week and there have been no more issues - so I'm pretty sure it's fixed. I didn't see anything on the connector end of the harness that would indicate that cleaning the contacts would do any good - so I think the problem is internal to the switch itself.

I thought I would post this in case anyone else is having this type of problem - pay attention to the symptoms on the dash, and if they are similar, it's probably your ignition switch.

I had called my trusted mechanic and he wanted to start with the simple stuff - tune up, cap, rotor, etc. which would have probably cost me $200 without fixing the problem. (it's like he wasn't even listining when I described the symptom!).

Good luck - DC


I just wanted to thank you for posting this!!! My '97 did this to me last night on the interstate and scared the bejesus out of me. Now I can take it to my mechanic and actually know what the problem is!