the two wires on the starter.....are they touching each other? saw a youtuber that had a car do the same thing, and that's what it was.
Nope. But today I ruled out the ignition switch by disconnecting it and using a jumper wire at the plug and it still has the same problem BUT only when there is load from the starter on it. With the heavy cable to the starter disconnected everything works fine and if you disconnect the starter when the no power problem is happening it doesn't bring it back. So my next step is going to be trying to replace the starter relay and then throw a spare starter at it if that doesn't work. Something I would have tried already had the starter relay still been readily available locally.
