KA24E No Start, stumped

[AceOfHz]

Intake manifold was all clear. On attempting to start, the slightest bit of air comes out of the exhaust but its barely noticeable. Didn't notice anything blocking exhaust when looking down pipe with flashlight.

Here is what my distributor situation is currently:

[AceOfHz]

Replaced ignition coil and coolant temp sensor today and still nothing.

[p00t]

Did your coil come with the transistor? What is your voltage to it when cranking? Spark should be blue/white.

Take the O2 out in case the cat is plugged. If it doesnt help you can put it back. Its worth a shot.

[AceOfHz]

My coil did not come with a new transistor (ignition module?). Voltage to ignition coil when cranking is between ~ 9.80 and 10.20. Spark is still the same yellow/orange color, despite replacing ignition coil.

Another new thing I noticed today is that my spark plug wire for the #2 cylinder spot on the distributor either does not spark at all or only sparks at the very beginning and very end of cranking, nothing in between. All others spark regularly. Does not matter what spark plug wire is used, even if it's a known good one.

Edit: Ordered ignition module, should be here Thursday. Sprayed down o2 sensor and will attempt to take it out soon.

[p00t]

Voltage supply sounds good. But you also need a good ground. From the transistor and connection to it so inspect those. If you replace the transistor and you still have orange spark, and the wiring looks ok, you will need to check the signal from the ECU. It should be pulsing cranking voltage on the signal wire.

My only guess with the #2 issue is your spark is so weak that it cant always jump the gap between the rotor and cap. Each cylinder has a tiny bit of different gap. If you just use a plug off of the wire to the coil it should not miss a beat if I am right.

Let us know how the transistor works out.

[AceOfHz]

Somehow missed the reply notification and have been too busy to work on the car. Again, thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.

I checked spark color today, after new transistor was in, and it's still orange. I'll check signal voltage hopefully tomorrow after work.

Couldn't get the O2 sensor out, I soaked it in PB blaster a few weeks back and tried it today after getting an o2 sensor socket and had no luck. Soaked it again today for a half hour and tried a 2nd time and still no dice.

On a side note, I did notice these connectors were not plugged into anything. If it matters, the AIV seems to be gone on my particular car, the previous owner must have taken it out. Any idea if these are needed or what they would be for?

[p00t]

Man your car sucks (for now).

There is a condenser on the harness just before the ign coil. It will have a black wire with red stripe going to it. Pull the condenser off and jumper battery 12v to the pin connected to that wire. Then jumper from the coil frame to battery negative or a good ground.

See if the spark is improved.

[AceOfHz]

So I think the condenser you're talking about was mentioned towards the start of the thread as a "resistor". Is this it? If so, I couldn't figure out how to take it out nor could I find really any mention of it online. I tried prying on some ledges on the face but they broke off, you can sort of see it in the 2nd picture.



]

[p00t]

Okay man we are here to fix stuff not break them LOL!

Push pick or small screw driver into the side with the tab to unlock it then use a screw driver to pry the condensor&resistor out. The housing is a flexible plastic, the removable part is brittle (as you already found out).


Proof it comes out:

[AceOfHz]

Okay, so I (think) I wired it up the way you said to. Wire from black/red pin to 12v, wire from coil frame to ground. Spark color did not seem to improve or change at all. Attached are pictures showing how I wired it, as well as the resulting spark. Let me know if I did something incorrectly. What was this supposed to do anyway, bypass that little box in case it was burnt out?

[AceOfHz]

Okay, so I've tinkered around with the car some more since the last post. I thought maybe the ECU could be bad (since it's one of the few things I haven't replaced at this point) so I decided to grab the codes off it. It came up with code 55 (no malfunction). I also did the TPS check on it just for the heck of it and it tested fine too.

After that I decided to check fuel was getting past the filter for the millionth time, but I hadn't checked in month so I thought maybe it could have changed. I also wanted to see what the fuel looked like. So I unhooked the fuel hose coming out of the out side of the fuel filter and put it into a water bottle. Long story short, I ended up draining all I could from the tank as the fuel ended up being a pretty deep orange/red/brown color, as seen below. Particles were already in the bucket before gas went in.



Now about 5 months ago or so, I had drained all the fuel out of the tank (or as much as I could get out with a hand siphon), which had been sitting in the car for as long as 7 years possibly, then and filled the rest with fresh gas. A few weeks ago I also put in a bottle of the HEET brand water remover for gasoline.



I also noticed this "custom" wiring around the starter. The starter engages and spins just fine every time, so I'm not sure exactly what the purpose is. It is the black and red wire in the below picture. Black comes out of harness and goes to starter, red is not connected to anything.





Again, any and all advice is appreciated. I've been stumped with this car for around 7 months now.

[AceOfHz]

Worked on the car a bit more since the last post. I changed the oil and oil filter as the oil in the car was old and I figured at this point it probably had a bit of gas in it from cranking over the engine so many times. I also put about 5 gallons of new gas in as well as a bottle of water remover for gasoline. I took out all the spark plugs (NGK ZFR5E-11), checked gap (around .043) and left them out for a day for the cylinders to dry in case any gasoline was still in them. Today I took off the injector rail and again checked to make sure each injector was firing, and they all were.

I put it all back together and tried to start it a few times and again, it still just cranks over and over.

[mechanicalmoron]

Will it run on ether?

[AceOfHz]

I had sprayed it with starting fluid maybe a month or two ago and got no result. But I tried it again this evening since a few things have changed since then and the car started to stumble to life for the first time since I've owned it. It didn't keep running or idle but it would run very rough while being sprayed. So I'm thinking the fuel pump may be providing too weak of pressure. I ordered a fuel pressure tester yesterday as I suspected that could be the case.

The whole fuel pump assembly is pretty gnarly looking in general, the metal bits have a decent amount of rust on them. So I'm thinking I'll try to get another whole assembly off ebay or somewhere. But I think I'll test the pressure and take the old assembly out and inspect it before I pull the trigger on an assembly/pump. So far I've only saw a glimpse of it because I didn't want to chance splitting the fuel lines attached to the top when I disconnect them to take it out and because I figured it was working okay as it made the priming noise and the injectors sprayed.

[mechanicalmoron]

So if you put a 2 or 3 second spray of ether in the intake, and go turn the key, it should fire right up and run great for a few seconds, if not there's something else wrong.

You seem to have a cruddy fuel system problem, obviously... that orange looks like your tank is full of rust and junk. You might consider dropping it so you can shake it out. But that's not going to be a miracle fix, it will just prevent more crap getting into and destroying your fuel system constantly.

All the parts you're replacing are totally pointless and much more harm than help, by the way, it just complicates things.

But if it won't run on ether (great fuel), it won't run no matter how great your fuel system gets.

If it fires but doesn't run smoothly on ether, check spark time, if it's off check mechanical time, and do a leakdown and/or compression test. Verify that the engine CAN run, before wasting a bunch more time on engine management parts.

[AceOfHz]

It ran decent on starting fluid, or about as well as a car can run just having starter fluid sprayed into the intake manifold.

I'm trying to understand how replacing parts that could cause a no start issue is complicating things? I replace something, it doesn't fix the issue, it eliminates that from the list of things that could be wrong. It's not like I'm replacing a wheel bearing or throwing on a turbo and hoping it suddenly starts. I know throwing parts at an issue isn't the best way to fix something but I'm not a master mechanic and don't have the knowledge or tools to troubleshoot most things off the top of my head. At worst, now I have extra parts in case something goes bad, and since the car has 167k that's not a bad thing.

Earlier in the post I mentioned checking mechanical timing and distributor timing, as well as doing a compression test, all of which checked out. I had also sprayed it with starter fluid a while back and it did nothing, so something done in the past few months has allowed it to start igniting.

This week the plan is to test fuel pressure, then take out the fuel pump assembly and see if it's salvageable, then probably drop the tank and clean out any crud that's accumulated in there. If the pump is weak I'll replace it as well. That way I know the fuel system is as clean as I can get it and I can eliminate crap in my gas tank being a problem. I have checked just about everything I can think of at this point and it seems that right now I've got it narrowed down to weak fuel pump/pressure and crud in the gas tank.

[mechanicalmoron]

....more bad implications about starting fluid....

It's way better fuel than gasoline, just by the way. It won't run better on it's own cruddy injectors than on ether.

Often, on old little cruddy cars that have sat, some ether is necessary to get it to run at all, and it will take over on it's own after a while, all the forces when it's running are way higher than cranking, at least twice as fast, so things are a lot more likely to get broken free, with the faster harder stuff happening.

If you have fuel pressure after the filter, you might consider just running it on ether a few minutes, you may find that it saves you a lot of work.

[AceOfHz]

Okay, so. Long week. Got my fuel pressure tester in, I got maybe 2-3 psi after the fuel filter. So I took out the fuel pump assembly and dropped the tank. The tank was absolutely disgusting, the whole inside was covered with rust and there was tons of rust settled at the bottom (like handfuls). I just got a Por-15 gas tank repair kit and am working on cleaning out, removing rust, and re lining the inside of the tank. I also ordered a whole new fuel pump assembly, as well as the gasket and some fuel line to replace the old.

Here are pictures of the old fuel pump and assembly. As you can see its super crusty, and the hose coming from the pump has disintegrated into the last layer and there's a hole right where the fuel comes out of the pump, which explains why I could hear it prime and did get some fuel from the injectors, but not enough to get it going I guess. The fuel pump looks like an old battery that has exploded. The sock had also fallen off and into the tank and is black and partially disintegrated. One of the wires that attach to the top plate had also came off and all were seriously corroded (they're blue now). By next week I'm hoping to have a revamped fuel tank and pump assembly.