For those of you who have had the ignition relay harness and added relay put in between your battery and your starter:

Have you had the relay fail and if so - what did your starter do? I am having a major starter issue and I believe the relay that was put in may have died. I was hoping to just swap it with another relay like the cooling fan but it is one of these odd-looking relays not just the square - but with the whole plastic hood that screws on to the radiator support.

I am not in a position to test anything. But I went to Advance yesterday asked if they could test the starter - they said everything was fine. It is not fine. I am now stranded with 12 hours or rain coming and I'll be spending another night in the car. Does any place test relays?

Can't have the car worked on at a shop or have it towed due to the driver's door issue (see other thread).

Thanks.

UPDATE: took out the starter relay from the radiator support harness. Tested the connections (87 + 30) - same result as with the relay. Swapped the cooling fan relay in there - started right up. Repeated 5 times without moving, then drove around town to charge the battery and make sure nothing else went wrong. Added another 3 starts total of 8 with no problems - figured I would just get up today and go buy a new starter relay and problem solved. Get up this morning go out and -. back to square 1. Same no-start / grinding / scraping hellish sound. I could not believe it.

What now? My assumption was that the RELAYS for the cooling fan and for the starter were interchangeable. Is this not the case?

Surely someone else has gone through this recall relay harness fiasco and had starting issues. I put another new negative battery cable bolt on the battery, tightened all the connections down on the starter and had 16 good no problem starts. Then another loud, horrible failure with no variables changed.

Is the relay that goes onto the end of the wiring harness for the starter (the big one with the plastic hood to cover the rubber seal vs the cube shaped ones from the fuse box - like the one for the cooling fan that I now have on that harness) all exactly the same and interchangeable?

After what I went through in 2015 - I can't go through it again having some guy tell me to start replacing the starter - over and over and over again before deciding it isn't the starter.

What about that ground wire that comes out of the negative battery cable and - outside of the plastic casing - is attached to the metal battery tray? Mine looks a little rusted. I'm talking about that section where you can see the multiple tiny metal strands braided. Could that be causing a bad ground? Where else does that added recall harness go to? I can't see where it goes other than from the wire between the battery and starter up to the relay - which is what I assumed had died but apparently I am either wrong or the relays aren't interchangeable after all.

Still struggling. Can't even find the for-sure answer on the correct starter model number. So much conflicting information on differing websites.

Do all 2001 Cavaliers use the same starter model? Because half the places I check say yes, and the other half say it depends on manual vs auto, and a bunch of other options. I also cannot for the life of me find out whether I will have to remove the bell housing cover or not.

Thought I would update this and the other thread. No progress and my life sucks.