Electrical good, won't turn over

It's been a long, cold couple months, but today was nice...so I charged up the battery from 70% to about 85% and tried to go for a ride. The headlights, radio, and 4-spd backup light work fine - but engine will not even begin to turn over. I think it's the clutch switch. To verify that, I would jump the terminals going to the green and yellow wires on the solenoid - right??
Come to think of it....let's speculate that it's been going bad gradually....could a partially defective clutch switch (e.g., high resistance) cause any performance problems?

what car?

Sorry, 70 Chally R/T, 440 4-spd. Solenoid is right next to battery.

The clutch switch is a simple off-on between the solenoid and ground. If you ground the wire leading to the clutch switch, the motor should crank with the key. Other then the start circuit, the clutch switch shouldn't be involved in any other function unless you have cruise control, then it would be involved in disengaging the cruise. The clutch switch on a stick trans replaced the park-neutral switch on an automatic trans.

You can also jump from the battery post on the solenoid to the small wire going to the starter and the starter should crank, be sure the car is out of gear first though.

If your having other performance issues, I would look at the ignition switch and the bulkhead connector for corroded wire terminals. Gene

What Gene said, ground the clutch switch male terminal that's on the starter relay & see if it will (now) crank. see if the yellow "ign" wire at the starter relay is hot when the key is turned to "start".

one other area to look at is the plug at the bottom of the steering column. look for signs of possible corrosion causing resistance heat to start melting the wire[s] in the start/run circuits, or pin "push out" at the connectors.

I just grounded the terminal on the relay and it started right up.

Now I just need to get rid of slight backfire thru the exhaust on decel...

I think the cam is a bit wiped.

Any little exhaust leak will cause a backfire on decal....

So will engine vacuum leak.