Sorry its so long. I hope you take the time to read it, and maybe help me.

Yep... its kaput. It just started running bad on my way home form dayton yesterday. It would miss quite a bit, would not accelerate when I oppened the throttle up. The idle was verry rough and sparratic(and it died a few times) I made it into the garage, and chacked all the vacume lines and plug wires, which all were fine. The "check engine" light is not on.

Went out today after work. It started up and ran smooth for a few secs, but then the tach got really shakey, and it tried to die. When I hit the gas, there were really bad poping sounds from the exhaust(almost sounded like a harly being reved up). Then, it died. Now it won't start up at all.

Unfortunally, I don't have a fuel pressure guage(Just ordered it), but I think its a problem in the fuel system. Anyway, I've seen high flow fuel pumps, that mount in the stock location, but I forget where. If anyone knows where I could order one, please help.

 

You definitely need to check for fuel and spark before you do anything else. Check all of the connections on your distributor and ignition coil, maybe something shook loose. Does it crank?

 

When I said I checked the plug wires, I mean with a timing light. All 8 were fireing. I cant' really do much till I get the fuel pressure guage.

 

if u have the means check the injector pulse....that happend to my car...it started sputtering really bad because it was on 7 cylinders...it would come and go then it completely shut off...turned out of my injectors fried and shorted out the computer.. there supposed to have right around 11 volts to them (injectors) the one that was burnt out only had 1.2 volts...

also use an ohmmeter and check the resistance on them and see if u can have someone use and injector tester on them this will tell u the volts that the injector is getting......

a $80 injector costed me about 600 bucks and a month to get taken care of

were are u located??...i have an injector pulse tester

 

I found the problem. My distributer is shot. I was getting a spark, but then It stopped running all together. When I tried to crank it then, there was no spark. Took the distributer out, and it is all ****ed up. No I just have to pick one up and put it in tomorrow night.

 

ANYONE HAVE A CLUE ABOUT THIS PROBLEM..OK EVERY TIME MY CAR GETS TOTALLY COLD AND THEN I TRY TO RE START IT IT HAVE A REALLY HARD TIME DOING IT IT CRANKS AND CRANKS AND EVENTUALLY IT STARTS,I FOUND THAT IF I OPEN AND CLOSE THE IGNITION KEY SEVERAL TIMES THE CAR STARTS EASIER...THE FUEL PUMP IS NEW AND GOOD I HAVE A FULE RAIL PRESSURE GUAGE IT READS 40 SOMETHING WHEN I OPEN THE KEY...I HAD THE WHOLE TPI SYSTEM IN ANOTHER ENGINE AND I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM I SWITCHED THE WHOLE PLENUM AND SENSORS AND NOW ITS DOIING IT ON THIS ENGINE WITH NO ENGINE CODES....HELP ANYONE?..THANKS

 

well guys, I got the distributer on,set at 7* base timing and was ready to go, but once I plugged the brown timing wire back in, bad things happened. The car was extremely hard to start, and barely idled. When I pushed on the gas, nothing happened. It just stayed around 300-400rpm. I just don't get it. The car ran fine with the 7' of initial timing, but with the computer advance hooked up, would not run. I did not get a chance to check the timing with the wire on, bucause I couldn't keep it running long enough. The check engine light was not on either. I triple checked the vacume lines, plug wires, and everything else I could think of.

So can anybody help me track down the problem here, or am I doomed to use my car for decortion in the back yard?

 

HMMM MAYBE THE T.P.S OR THE M.A.F?

 

How old is the balancer? Maybe it slipped and you're not getting an accurating timing reading.

 

Sorry, no MAF. I checked the timing a few weeks ago on the old distrubuter. But the TPS thing may be a problem. How can I check that sensor?

I'm starting to think I the distributer I bought is defective or something.

Any other suggestiongs would be great.

 

I have seen this before in other GM products... usually what happens is that a fuel injector goes bad and either starts dumping fuel or starves the cyl.

Check the resistance of each injector... GM injectors usually die in pairs.

Hope this helps...

-Chris

 

You know it's rude to "hijack" someone else's thread with your OWN problem. And stop typing in ALL CAPS. It's annoying as hell. As far as your problem goes... I think you need to replace your coolant temperature sensor that's right under the throttle body.

 

Yikes, the more I try to fix the car, the worse it gets. Now it will only start half of the time with the timing wire disconnected. The other half, I can't see the timing line, and the enging will pop and bang bad. It actually blew an exhaust connection apart.

What would cause the timing to be right on half the time, and super far off the other half??? ALL WITH THE TIMING WIRE DISCONECTED!!!

My guess is a faulty knock sensor. But I'm not sure. Will a knock sensor retard with the wire disconnected? If not, what else could be the problem.

 

You say the distributor you pulled out was FUBAR....what exactly was wrong with it?
Was the distributor drive damaged? If so your problem may be deeper than the distributor.
Maybe it was just coincidental that it would crank and run with the advance disabled.
The knock sensor wouldn't have any effect with the advance disabled.
Have you tried to get any data from the ecm when it does run...that may help you get closer to identifying your problem.
Good luck...

 

The dist drive shaft was fine, The innards were cracked and falling appart. There were no codes from the ecm. while it was running.

Please anybody...what could cause the timing to change with the timing wire disconnected? The only thing I can think of is a bad dist. Am I correct?

Well I'm going to exchange the dist and see if that helps anything.