Car would not start

roofbolter · 10-08-2009, 05:16 PM

My car, 90-C4, shut off while I was idling at a stop light and would not re-start. I replaced the DME but it still would not start (turned over freely) I took a screw driver and tapped on the Idle speed control valve and it started right up. Has this happened to anyone, should I buy a new idle speed control valve? Any comments

Newsboy · Newsboy's Garage

Is the wire to the ISV secure? Perhaps tapping it helped the connection?

lucittm · lucittm's Garage

Roofbolter,
Could it have been a coincidence? Pull the ISV electrical connection while the car is idling and you may find out?

Mark

MURF · 10-09-2009, 10:52 AM

Check your ignition by disconnecting coils one at a time if one set of ignition is dead it feeds back into dme and voltage overload protection will reboot computer..causing shutdown...if not fixed will unsolder inside of dme

roofbolter · 10-26-2009, 04:37 PM

Car shut off again today under simular circumstances. Which were, drive of about 20 miles, came to an interesection, while the car was idling it shut off and would turn over freely but not start. Approximately 1 hour later it started and ran fine back to my house 20+ miles away. Shut it off at home and it started right back up. This is the second time this has happened and the car restarted after about 1 hour and ran fine back to my home. Both times the distance was 20-25 miles. Any ideas.

bazar01 · bazar01's Garage

One hour is a lot of time to check for spark and injector pulse. Which one was missing?

roofbolter · 10-26-2009, 04:57 PM

Did not check for either, in both cases was not in an area I could trouble shoot. I was worried about getting killed by traffic. On one of the previous posts to this problem, someone suggested that one of the coils or wire going to one could be bad. If the computer does reboot how long would it take to start up again

MURF · 10-26-2009, 05:28 PM

Disconnect 1 coil wire at distributor..run car..ok?then disconnect the other coil wire and reconnect the first one..run car.ok..if it doesn't run on either ignition system....the distributor belt could be bad [broken]..if you locate which ignition doesn't work[upper or lower]switch the coil wire from good ignition to other distributor..run now?when locating the bad ignition repl coil and ignition module..we usually replace both ignitions..the other one will fail the day after tomorrow..youn can send dme computer to ecu doctor.com and they will bench test for nominal fee...the secondary voltage [30k] will jump into 12 volt wiring and enter the dme computer..the voltage will cause dme to reboot..eventually it will unsolder the dme and become intertmitent problem

roofbolter · 10-26-2009, 06:21 PM

thanks I will give it a try

roofbolter · 10-28-2009, 02:18 PM

I checked the coils by disconnecting them one at a time, in each instance the car continued to start and run. Have anything else I can look for?
thanks

Chris Wiles · Chris Wiles's Garage

Holy smoke I sort have the same problem on my 91 Cab! It's starting to cut out as I drive so I'm not driving it too much. Does the DME chip kind of go out? I don't know.. I thought if it was the DME chip its either working or not.. Is this right? Does the feul pump start to go out like this?

MURF · 10-28-2009, 05:04 PM

Check the coils ..look inside the tower where coil wire plugs in..corrosion?..check the resistance of the coil wires with ohm meter...secondary voltage is entering primary wires and traveling to dme brain...replace coils and ignition modules..not expensive stuff

Chris Wiles · Chris Wiles's Garage

OK so I got my car fixed. It seems the new Alternator/ generator wasn't charging the battery very well and as the battery would run down the engine computer would randomly shut down. Now that the Battery has been fully charged and with a new alt/ gen the car is as good as new, till the next thing breaks....

roofbolter · 04-12-2010, 04:50 AM

I replaced the coils and the ignition modules but that did not solve the problem, it turned out the be the crank sensor