Often when you’re working on your vehicle, you need someone to crank the engine while you have your head under the hood. Your arms aren’t long enough. If you have a lovely assistant, that will work. But if I had a lovely assistant I can think of a lot of things I’d rather they be doing. And so would they.

So they make this gadget: a remote starter switch.



You just pull the solenoid wire off the starter, and connect the switch between the solenoid connector and the big 12v wire on the starter. Not so bad on many vehicles, but on a Toyota truck pretty much impossible. To access that connection you’re almost required to remove the right front wheel.

Well, there IS a better way. The solenoid wire’s previous stop is at the starter relay (post ‘88). On my 1994 3VZE-automatic-with power windows it’s conveniently in JB-1 under the hood.


God knows where it is on your vehicle; that’s one part that’s moved around a lot depending on, heck, I don’t know what it depends on.

The top of the relay shows you that pins 5and 3 are switched, so ONE of them goes to the starter solenoid, and the other goes to 12v (with keyon). Pull out the relay (use a circular motion to inch out each of the four connectors) Then YOU will figure out which one has 12v with your multimeter; on mine pin 3 goes to the starter solenoid.


Insert a piece of wire with a spade lug into the relay socket connector. (It’s going to switch about 5 amps, so I wouldn’t use my trusty paperclip.) Connect your remote starter switch between that wire and 12v. Voila.


(The switch in a cheap remote starter like mine takes a beating; a snap-action switch would be better. After sitting in my tool chest for a bunch of years, the contacts had corroded up to about 60 ohms – way too much to pull in the solenoid. But after a minute or two of vigorous exercising, I had knocked off enough crud to get the switch to work. Keep that in mind if you get your switch from eBay, even if it once said “SnapOn.” )

If you don’t have a switch, you can crank the starter just by connecting your solenoid jumper wire to 12v. If you need to stand on the left side, you might need to run a wire from the battery to get the 12v close to you. Be careful with that; if you accidentally ground that wire the battery will dump more than 100amps into it. The results will be spectacular, but not pretty.

 

I'm currently trying to set the carb float height on my 22r which won't idle properly and dies after a few seconds (because float is off). This is pretty much impossible to do by yourself without a remote starter since you need to be in the cab to start the vehicle, but if you're in the cab, you can't see what's happening in the carb float bowl and the engine dies before you can jump out of the cab and run over the see what's going on. This is extremely helpful! Gunna try this method right now! Thank you!

 

Also worth noting, a pretty heavy duty switch that will handle very high amps well, and lower amps (like on a 4 cyl) without breaking a sweat, you can pickup for like $25-$50 on Amazon, maybe a little more if you want a quality USA made one. As tempting as it might be to good a SnapOn or Matco or something for a "good deal" on eBay....just don't. As you said, these are electrical components with a contact that can be exposed to a lot of abuse and corrosion. For $30 you can get a damn good unit, brand new that will work way better for way longer than some old "vintage" USA made thing. Buying vintage vises or hand tools is one thing....vintage electrical stuff is a whole other issue.