SC cranks, but wont fire

mkurkowski

Registered User
hey guys. i know this question has been asked a million times and i've gone back through the previous posts and learned a lot....so bare with me here. 92 SC 5-spd. i parked it in the driveway on monday night and i went to leave yesterday and it cranks but wont start. this is the info i've got so far: the "shift-up" light is NOT on when cranking; it hasn't fired yet since the problem (probably 15 tries); when cranking, the tach comes up to a few hundred RPM and then bounces right in that area; the bolt in the harmonic balancer is still there and tight; when i turn the key on, i don't hear the fuel pump, should i? (i don't remember); never noticed any signs of anything like this before, ran perfect; that's all i can think of right now.....but just ask if you need other info. thank-you in advance!

next question. i've been looking into handheld diagnostics units. does anyone have any suggestions for a reasonably priced versatile unit? what should i buy? thanks again.
 
A couple of things come to mind...

Are you getting fuel to the rail? There is a fuel pump relay in the trunk (behind the fabric cover on the driver side below the fuel pump safety shut-off inertia switch) that might be stuck, or the inertia switch may have been tripped. If you can get a fuel pressure test guage (fairly cheap at an autoparts store) you can attach it to the schrader valve on the fuel rail to see if you are getting fuel to the injectors. You might also have a bad cam sensor. This can cause a flakey tach signal and intermittent no-crank. If you try to crank the car three or four times and it eventually fires, then I would say its the cam sensor. As far as a tester, I have a cheap code reader that I picked up at WalMart for about $25 a few years back. You don't really even need that to get codes. There is a way to pull the codes with a paperclip inserted into the test plug. I'm not sure how to do that, but the procedure is detailed somewhere on this site.
Anyway, if you are sure it isn't balancer/crank sensor related then these are the first things I would check...
 
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