The guy I bought it from said the guy he got it from used the button because the solenoid was bad.

Just for ruling things out, how do you go about checking the solenoid? I've tried shorting the two terminals (only seen that once, don't even know if it works that way) nothing happens.

The wiring.. in that thing, it just looks like such a rats nest..

Waiting on my repair book. I'll comb the wiring when that gets here.