HELP NO START

[dohcfiend]

man my gremlins as of late are like flies. i kill one and 2 come back.

ok i eliminate all my gremlins, and go to my friends house. i got down on it twice and it is like a rocket now. anyway i pull up into his driveway and the car stalls and won't restart.

i popped the hood and there is oil everywhere. 1 major oil leak from the front valve cover and somehow the pcv valve got blown off. i lost about 2 quarts, 1 of them was in the plenum and intake tube assy.

i have done the following: replaced the plugs i thought they were oil fouled and the electrode was cracked on #3. checked the wires they are fine, checked the injectors, they are fine, plugged the pcv hose on both ends, swapped out the ign module and all 3 coilpacks, swapped out the MAF sensor, checked the timing belt/chain. the tps is working fine (.62 at 0% throttle angle) as is the iac and o2(around 400 mv), i tried spraying starting fluid in and nothing. i pulled the valve cover and it seems the cams are aligned but i haven't checked the physical timing yet. fuel pressure is adequate.

also smoke comes out of the intake and it smells like burnt gas, the source for most of it is the port on the front valve cover.

things i haven't tried yet but will: replced the pcv valve b/c i am pretty sure the original isn't any good, ad the 2 quarts of oil back just for the hell of it even though i don't think that is the problem, check the physical timing. maybe i might replace the cam sensor. is there any alignment for it or is it just a magnet like the crank sensor? check compression for the hell of it.

things that might be wrong that i might not do right now: crank sensor, ecm, and chip

any suggestions???????

[Doubt_Incarnate]

your motor somehow sucked in a ton of its own oil through the pcv, so that means you pcv is proabably better off replaced, they are cheap and the piece of mind is worth it. i think i actually pulled mine out once and the car died, but that was when i was more of a kid 8 years ago, and i try to forget things from when i was stupid. the only way i can think your pcv popped off was it wasnt working correcty or somehow your valvecover got pressurised and it was forced off, i dunno what could do that, except for maybe bad seals on the exhaust valves, but that would probably have to be everyone of them. really good idea to put the oil in, maybe flush some of the oil out of the intake or even a topend cleaner, maybe even to get another car... you seem to be having alot trouble with this one on a daily basis.

[dohcfiend]

well, i have only myself to blame for most of the problems as of late. my most recent gremlins were sealing problems with the intake tube an inherent issue when going with any new untested part. unfortunately i picked out the wrong injectors and fouled the plugs, which was totally my fault. the low speed stall and bad idle was a tuning issue and is gone now. the braking problem might just be a standard mainainence problem i am waiting to see if it was related to the idle screw adjustments but if not there may be another brake booster in the future.

and then there is this, which has really got me wishing i had sprung that vacuum guage to see what kind of vacuum i was pulling. while it is frustrating i am not going to give up. besides i remember trying to sell the car almost a 2 years ago stock for a meager 2k with no success. even when i get around these gremlins if i tried to sell it or trade now it would be practically worthless since it has been modded.

but my recent problems do have me second guessing on whether or not i should do any more major mods to the engine and perhaps pondering a carbed vehicle or at least something with a distributor in the future.

[Doubt_Incarnate]

arent cars wonderfull, i've quickly learned obd2 sucks. i think my next vehical will be carbed and completely "stupid" and whith a whopping 4 wires under the hood (aside from spark). besides, you dont have to get rid of it, you just might need a amore reliable driver, and use this baby as a rice killer, or weekend warrior.

do the TDC motors have a PCV on each valve cover? the covers seem pretty much independant of each other to me. im not sure if your vent system is similar to pushrods, but mine draws air in from the intake tube down into the front VC and through the valley and block and is sucked into the plenum through the pcv valve in the rear valve cover. so if the pcv is on the vacuum side its really strange that it popped off.

[LQ1]

The PCV is connected through a plastic Y hose, one end to each cam cover, then to the PCV, then to the intake.

[dohcfiend]

do the TDC motors have a PCV on each valve cover?

it is pretty much like he said except 96-97 which only has a port on the front valve cover.

[Doubt_Incarnate]

it still boggles me as to how it popped off, mine fits pretty tightly. and the plug that had a crack might be indications of another problem. i'd do the compression check if replacing the pcv doesnt help, ive never cracked a head, but if it did it might be possible that the coolant went where it shouldnt have and steamed up the valvecover and the pressure may have popped the pcv off, and coolant hitting a plug could have crackrd it. most likely thats a worse case senerio, really far fetched. but stil,l a compression check wouldn't hurt, its one of the few ways we can tell whats going on the chamber without pulling heads. might as well pull both the covers off and see whats going on there.

[your_I.D.]

Sounds like a piston with a hole in it. Or melted around the top piston ring. Compression test will find it.

[dohcfiend]

k replaced the pcv and added oil. got rained out ofter that still nothing. didn't add the cam sensor b/c i found out they do not cause a no start. going to check timing and compression today if weather provides. some1 i know says he thinks it is overly rich. he told me to pull the injection fuse and spray starting fluid in to see if it gets anything. but that raised another question to me what happens when the fuel pressure regulator fails?

[dohcfiend]

well, i checked timing and that is ok and i done that starting fluid thing. that shit made a backfire explosion that about blew my eardrums.

checked fuel pressure, it is fine. i borrowed a compression guae but it didn't have the ohc attachment so i had to scew it in as best as i could i only got about 75 psi on 2, 4 and 6. but i think i will actually get the right guage attachment and try all 6 when i do.

unfortunately i am starting to fear the worst though.

[your_I.D.]

My fuel pressure reg . was bad when I bought my car. All it did was run gas out the vacuum hose going to the throttle body. Just pull the hose off and cycle the key to check. If fuel comes out of the vacuum port its bad. It will run rich. Mine was still drivable. Shitty gas mileage though.

[LQ1]

If its your FPR it should still run. One way to find out, when you try starting it, put the gas pedal to the floor while you crank it. My car was getting flooded from time to time, i suspected the FPR, but it would never start with normal cranking, i had to push the gas down to suck more air in to compensate for the amount of fuel already in the cylinders. it started up and the revs went sky high, but she ran like a top.

Seeing as you have done a pretty good diagnosis I would def get the right compression guage and check that out.

[Doubt_Incarnate]

if it backfired at least you know you have spark, take it easy on the starter fluid, i had a heck of a time starting my truck after i put the efi on it and it and i blew the muffler wide open with that stuff, atractted the attention of the entire block. turned out the igniton timing was way retarded. at the risk of sounding like a condecending bastard like my dad, double check your plug wires to make sure they're right. you know how often its a little thing that puts a halt to the entire work. I'm curious as to what a compresion check will tell, especialy on the #3 where the you say the plug had a cracked insulator.

[slick94prix]

but my recent problems do have me second guessing on whether or not i should do any more major mods to the engine and perhaps pondering a carbed vehicle or at least something with a distributor in the future.

Tell you the truth, I have been the same way lately. It seems as if it is 1 thing after another. So, thats why I have put off doing mods until I can get the car running right (unless I can mod it will I'm fixing it, for example the lower intakes gasket is leaking, so time for the 96-97 intake swap). I have seriously thought about going carbd and rwd myself. They are soo much easier to work on, and much funner and easier to mod as well.

It does seem though that you should do a compression test. You are getting fuel, it seems as if you are getting spark, so compression is the next thing to check. If thats good, time to check the timing.

BTW, does it even crank? I didn't read all the way through it all...

[dohcfiend]

no, not really the starter turns it over but it doesn't make any effort to start.

i just ordered the guage from summit. i tried borrowing one but it didn't work and the 3 local parts stores that carried the guages don't work on dohc motors. as widespread as they are now, u figure they would start carrying them with the dohc attachment or at least carry the attachment seperate.

to summarize, i have tested/swapped everything except the ecm/chip and checked comression.