The car is a 1989 350ci GTA, and as the title says it won't start!

The fuel pump makes the normal priming noise, but rather than stopping after two seconds, it seems to continually prime. No matter how long you sit their for it just keeps going.

What could be causing this? Does it mean the fuel pump is bad? Or could it be something else? Could the ECM be bad?

I don't want to spend the weekend changing the fuel pump and then find out that it is something else.

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated guys.

 

It could be the ecm, but you should first determine the reason it willnot start, is it getting any spark if it is are the injectors being pulsed, if you are hearing the pump check to see if it has fuel pressure before you pull the pump.

 

Greetings,

You have a PM.

 

It does have a spark.

How do I check to see if the injectors are getting pulsed?

My friend is coming over with a fuel pressure gauge this evening so I'll post the results of that.

 

Okay, fuel pressure at the fuel rails is 36psi with ignition turned on.

We recently had the ECM out to install the Moates ZIF socket., but put the existing chip straight back in. The chip was put in the wrong way round. We know this can kill the PROM, and have burned a replacement stock chip but this has made no difference.

The SES light is not showing any codes.

The ECM fuse is intact and not blown.

All the fuses in the box under the steering wheel are intact also.

We reckon we have narrowed it down to the following.
1. We are wondering if the injectors aren't pulsing. Why would this be? ?ECM or wiring problem?
2. ? No spark. We are heading back out to check things again just now.
3. Could this be caused by bad gas? Like stale gas if the tank was last filled 2-3months ago. The fuel is a 97-RON octane variety available in the UK and Europe, which we have heard rumours that it has a short shelf life.

Any more ideas?

 

Other suggestions from people have been
1. bad ecm or wiring to it.

2. bad fuel pump relay staying energized.

3. bad oil pressure sender/switch stuck in closed position.

How do I check the fuel pump relay and the oil pressure sender/switch? Can the relay be switched over with another relay that's on the car?

Is their any way to check the ECM? Other than trying to find someone to swap one with?

 

My car did this when my fuel pump relay went south for the winter but my car still started and ran; just the pump would constantly whine when the key was on.

Could try swapping the MAF burnoff relay with the fuel pump relay as a quick test to see if it will fire.

 

I had this problem when I started burning Proms. With CM's ziff socket the prom goes in backwards. Which it sounds like you noticed.

How are you burning the prom? You have to stack the bins on a new burned chip. If you burn it to the first spot on the chip then it won't work. (Atleast for me it didn't)

Try a couple things...

Pull the ziff socket out and put the regular blue thing back in. ( I can't remember it's real name right now)

If this works fine then it's something with the chip or CM's adapter

Put the Ziff socket back in with the blue thing but don't put the burned chip in. It should crank but the SES light will come on since it's in Limp Home mode.

This should show that the adapter is ok.

Then start looking at the chip...

I'm thinking that perhaps you didn't stack the bin, but try the other things if you did.

David

 

Okay guys, we have now managed to get the car started again. However, the SES light is on continously. When we bridge the terminals with a paper clip it's not changing or giving us any codes. It is idling at around 1700rpm, when in park, though it sounds good. No funny nosies or anything. It is idling around 1200rpm when in drive.

The car did have a custom chip in it when we bought it, but currently we have burned a stock bin chip and have that in the car.

We double checked all the solder work and theres no problem there.

Black 91 Z28 / David, how do we ensure that we are 'stacking' the chip?

We have a 27SF512 chip, from what i have read this should be too big, so I looked through the Buffer on PP2 program and worked out that it had used from 000000 -> 004000, So I told the program to start writing to the chip from 00BFF0 -> 00FFF0. Is this correct? Have I got the right idea but still doing something wrong?

Thanks for all the help so far, any more help would be much
appreciated.

 

Hey, I used a program called BinComp from Craig Moates site. You basically just stack the same bin 16 times on the chip. It's a simple windows drag and drop program. Here is the link for his site.

http://www.moates.net/gmecm/software.html

David

 

Thanks David, I'll try that and let you guys know how I get on.