Okay, so for a while my car was doing this thing where it wouldn't start for about 5 minutes, then it would start and be okay.

After that happened about 3 or 4 times, I got home from work one night, parked the car, and then went to go to the grocery store and it wouldn't start at all.

Did some testing with my girlfriend's Dad, and we replaced the ignition coil, and it started.

When I was coming home from work the next day, it wouldn't start, then it started, I got home, and bam, it wouldn't start again.

Took the coil back as a defect, and got another one. Put that one in, and it wouldn't start, then it would, then it wouldn't. Really flaky.

And, after about a minute of running, it would just die. It started running a little better, so I tried to drive it to my girlfriend's dad's house so we could work on it there. Died a mile away from my house, so we had it towed there.

Bought a distributor and put that in. Car started, and didn't die. Let it warm up, got the timing set, and all seemed right with the world.

Went to drive home, and BAM...a mile away from their house, I get a wierd buzzing noise from inside the dash, the check engine light comes on, it dies again. And I coasted into a parking lot.

So, we just rope towed it back to his house with his truck, and that's where we are now. It won't start, we pulled the battery hoping resetting the ECU might help, but it didn't.

So, hopefully someone here has dealt with a problem like this and can shed some light on this nightmare. I'm starting to hate my damn car. I'm going to try jumping the ECU and seeing if it throws any codes and I'll post those here if I find anything.

 

well obviously first step is check the cel....
Do you hears the fuel pump primming?
check main realy and ignitor

 

I'm almost 100% sure its your main relay.
Let us know if you hear your fuel pump priming.

 

Well, after I made this post, I went and did some searching, and found something that said the same thing. I pulled out the relay, and resoldered all the connections, and it still doesn't start.

Not that it's not bad somewhere other than the soldering, and not to say that I didn't make it worse by trying to resolder it.

But, no, I don't hear the pump priming. It's sort of a humming noise right?

I remember back when it was starting/not starting/starting the times it would start, it would make that humming noise when the key hit the ON position.

So, that really makes it sound like the main relay.


Another question...any chance it's in the ignition switch? Because I'm not getting any spark at the plugs either. Or does the ECU not send spark if the cars not getting fuel or something? Because there is power to the distributor, but no spark.



Modified by Mojo-Jojo at 12:10 PM 1/11/2004

 

i'm leaning towards the ignitor myself
have you ever changed this b4?

 

We actually changed in a friend's ignitor. My ignitor worked in his car, and his ignitor didn't work in my car. So I don't think it's that.

I've also tried the ignitor from the eBay distributor, and that didn't fix it either. I don't hear the fuel pump going, so I'm pretty sure the problem isn't in the distributor at this point.

 

Okay. We've got it narrowed down to either the igniter, main relay, or ECU.

Does anyone know what kind of signal we need coming in on the yel/grn wire into the igniter from the ECU? And, how to read it, what frequency/volts, etc it should be at? Do we need a digital or analog voltmeter?

We know the coil is good because if we bypass everything and hook the coil up to power, and pop the ground, we can get spark, so it's either the igniter, or the signal coming to the igniter from the ECU, which is powered by the relay.

I'm probably going to hit the dealer for a relay tomorrow. Since we're not getting the fuel pump priming noise, I'm guessing the relay is bad, since that would keep both things from happening.

 

The Yel/Grn wire for the igniter is just a pulsed DC waveform. Using your meter, if you can see 'activity' on this wire move onto to another area.

If you turn the key 'on' and don't hear the fuel pump prime, you are looking at either the main relay or what controls the main relay - the ignition switch.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by EE_Chris &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">The Yel/Grn wire for the igniter is just a pulsed DC waveform. Using your meter, if you can see 'activity' on this wire move onto to another area.

If you turn the key 'on' and don't hear the fuel pump prime, you are looking at either the main relay or what controls the main relay - the ignition switch.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Well...it wasn't the main relay...I didn't trust the old one after I did all that resoldering and stuff, so I grabbed a new one.

The other day we tested the wire coming into the igniter and got a signal with the digital meter that bounced from 0v to .2v when we tried to start the car, so it looks like the computer is working.

I don't think it's the ignition switch, because if the signal is getting to the igniter from the ECU then it's getting power from the ignition switch.

But, I'm having this really bad feeling that all the bouncing and shaking from the springs is shaking wires loose, and that I've dropped a couple hundred bucks replacing parts when I should have been trying to find the wire that's bad.

We're going to move the car into the garage, grab some wiring diagrams and trace everything from the key to the cylinder basically. Find where the signals die.

If it's just one wire that's shaken loose, I'm going to freak.