[MossRestoration]

Hi Brains Trust.

I'm hoping someone can help me troubleshoot a no start situation on an 85 944... I'll give you some back story so you know what I'm dealing with.

Sorry in advance, this will be long winded and I'm not the best writer.

A customer has purchased this car as a project and sent directly to me to have some rust repair work done as well as diagnose and potentially fix a no-start situation. He doesn't want the car restored, he just wants me to fix the couple of major issues that are beyond his ability so that he can then take it on as a passion project.

The car itself seems to have seen a dozen different owners who have all "had-a-go" at getting the car running.

So far, this is what I've fixed/replaced and why.

- First step was to fix the rust issues. It's a RHD with the battery in the scuttle tray directly above the fuse box/relay box, when it came to me, the battery tray had completely corroded away, meaning all the electrics underneath were soaking wet with plenty of corrosion on all the joints. relays full of water, and all the earthing points on the under side of the tray no longer doing their job. The battery tray is now re-fabricated and installed including all the earthing points.

Everything I've checked in the standard process for diagnosing a no-start had appeared to have been played with when I looked. Most had been played with... incorrectly.

First was the coil, wiring was back to front and an incorrect coil had been installed. I found an original one in the back seat of the car, tested this on the bench, (resistance and manually collapsing the field to generate a spark) Tested good so it was installed.

Second were the speed and reference sensors. Initially I wasnt getting a reading at all at the DME plug for either of them, so I went looking at the sensors themselves. the plugs on both the loom and the sensors had been replaced with spade terminals. Haggard but should still work. I tested for continuity between DME plug and DIY connectors - NONE and with no obvious place that I could see for a failure and the price of a new engine loom being reasonable, this was replaced. Along with both sensors. When removing the sensors there were shards of metal on the ends, so I checked the gap and sure enough this had been tampered with too. So the new sensors are now in with a correct 0.8mm gap on the speed sensor (closest to the back of the car).

The DME relay was full of water and since it needed replacing, the customer decided to get a solid state relay with the diagnosis LED's.

After all this, still no start.

-No fuel pump (pump itself is fine, looks new and replaced by one of the PO's) No power at the pump at any stage.

-Still No Spark

-No tach bounce on cranking.


Not that it matters at this point with no spark, but injectors are all showing 12v with key on.

LED's on the new relay currently all come on for a few seconds and then the CTR FUEL PUMP and FUEL PUMP Lights go out.


My thoughts at this stage is the next issue in the series seems likely to be in either the wiring loom between the 9 pin firewall plug and relays (car loom). The DME itself, or potentially both. It seems likely that with all the obvious work thats happened by previous owners, the car has been attempted to be started with the fuse box and relays all full of water.

Before I just go throw the customers money at a new DME, I'd like to bypass the cars loom,relays etc entirely just to be sure. (the wiring loom at the fuse box has been extensively tampered with. lots of soldered joins and splicing, relay cabling extended etc) I dont think it's not fixable. but at this stage, it would be significantly faster to bypass it all I think so that the DME can be tested and thus all the other components on the engine.

Does this sound like a reasonable plan? If I can get spark, then I can temporarily power the fuel pump to check other systems. No one has an endless budget and I'm doing my best to keep it as low as possible for the customer.

So with that in mind, does any one know which pins need power and which pins need ground and is the 9 pin plug the best place to intercept this? I'm assuming I will also need to run new wires directly to the coil since the engine loom isn't what connects to the coil.