The cranking of the engine is very straight forward action...nothing to do with the FCM.
Turning the ignition key to the final position ie. "start" supplies +12 volts to the coil of the Starter Relay.
If the other side of this relay coil goes down to ground due to either the Neutral or Park interlocks supplying it then +12 volts feeds through to the starter solenoid...if fuse #8 40 amps has not blown!
So if the engine does not crank then it could be the ignition switch, actuator pin assembly, bad starter relay, blown fuse #8, bad connections to the starter/solenoid, bad grounding straps between the engine block and chassis or bad battery connections including the negative battery lead to chassis.
So removing the Starter Relay and briefly jumping female pins 30 to 87 inside the empty socket will send +12 volts to the starter solenoid if fuse #8 is OK!
This jumping of pins 30 to 87 bypasses the ignition switch, Park and Neutral Interlocks and Actuator Pin Assembly.
So under the above condition the +12 volts should be present at the starter solenoid and if the solenoid is wired firmly and is in good condition the solenoid should supply +12 volts to the starter motor.
An intermittent non-cranking could also be that the starter motor has stopped on a bad commutator segment or the brushes are worn or dirty.
The engine actually firing would be subject to many other conditions and the FCM does play a part in this!
A SKIM problem does not stop the engine turning over...if the SKIM LED is flashing the engine will turn over and fire but will cut out after a few seconds. If the SKIM LED is on solid then the engine will crank but not fire at all.
