speedfreek95
New Member
Just thought I would share my weekend fun to see if someone can help shed some more light onto my problem.
A little bit of background info. This guys 94 ATX 138k was running fine and dandy until one day, when he was sitting at a stop light, it just cut off. No running rough, just good then dead. He tried cranking and cranking till the battery finally gave out, and called a tow truck to take it to a local repair shop. fast-forward a few days and this "mechanic" has given him quite the run around not having any clue what the h*ll he was doing and replaced the Crank sensor, water pump, timing belt, DIS AND the coil pack. talk about throwing parts at the problem. The guy charged him $1800, and the problem is still there. Then the owner took it to a ford dealer, who told him he needed a new ignition switch. this is where the guy gave up, and through word of mouth found me. Heres what I found:
-the brand new dis was secured with the two top bolts and the bottom two were cross threaded into the crossover tube and the heads were broken off....probably not the best ground so I put a good crossover tube and working DIS on it, made sure everything was grounded, cranked it, no dice
-The plug going to the coil pack was *****'d and the wire harnes between there and the TPS was all stripped off. new convoluted tubing, electrical tape and one used plug later, still no dice, but there is power going to VBAT at the coil, but nothing to fire.
Inside the car- tach was steady at 400 rpms while cranking and the CEL was on, so the CID should be fine.
Onto the CKP I started to backprobe the connector with my LED test light (did not have a dmm nearby, will go back out with that tomorrow), got power from the vbat, and then it got weird. I probed the PIP wires to check whether they were flashing while cranking, but the both had constant power whenever the key was in the run position. I did the same test on my SHO to make sure I wasnt being stupid, and it did what I thought it should. no light when key first turned to run, flashing while cranking, and solid(or flashing fast enough I cant tell) while running. But the ATX was SOLID from the second you turned the key top run, through cranking, and stayed solid after cranking. So I'm thinking that there is a short somewhere in the CKP wiring, or the new sensor is bad. The other thing that I'm curious about is that I doubt the guy who put it on had any idea about how much to space it at installation. but could the improper distance cause the sensor to send a signal 100% of the time? Anyone have any ideas about this? or is there something else in the system that could cause this. Am I being super ********?
I have already come to terms with the fact that I will have to tear apart the front of this guys motor to get to the ckp and double check/fix what the previous guy did, and have prepared the owner for such an event, but I'm curious as to whether or not there is something else I can be looking for while doing it. I'f had CKPs go out on me before, but never had one give me those test results. phew that was long
brendan
A little bit of background info. This guys 94 ATX 138k was running fine and dandy until one day, when he was sitting at a stop light, it just cut off. No running rough, just good then dead. He tried cranking and cranking till the battery finally gave out, and called a tow truck to take it to a local repair shop. fast-forward a few days and this "mechanic" has given him quite the run around not having any clue what the h*ll he was doing and replaced the Crank sensor, water pump, timing belt, DIS AND the coil pack. talk about throwing parts at the problem. The guy charged him $1800, and the problem is still there. Then the owner took it to a ford dealer, who told him he needed a new ignition switch. this is where the guy gave up, and through word of mouth found me. Heres what I found:
-the brand new dis was secured with the two top bolts and the bottom two were cross threaded into the crossover tube and the heads were broken off....probably not the best ground so I put a good crossover tube and working DIS on it, made sure everything was grounded, cranked it, no dice
-The plug going to the coil pack was *****'d and the wire harnes between there and the TPS was all stripped off. new convoluted tubing, electrical tape and one used plug later, still no dice, but there is power going to VBAT at the coil, but nothing to fire.
Inside the car- tach was steady at 400 rpms while cranking and the CEL was on, so the CID should be fine.
Onto the CKP I started to backprobe the connector with my LED test light (did not have a dmm nearby, will go back out with that tomorrow), got power from the vbat, and then it got weird. I probed the PIP wires to check whether they were flashing while cranking, but the both had constant power whenever the key was in the run position. I did the same test on my SHO to make sure I wasnt being stupid, and it did what I thought it should. no light when key first turned to run, flashing while cranking, and solid(or flashing fast enough I cant tell) while running. But the ATX was SOLID from the second you turned the key top run, through cranking, and stayed solid after cranking. So I'm thinking that there is a short somewhere in the CKP wiring, or the new sensor is bad. The other thing that I'm curious about is that I doubt the guy who put it on had any idea about how much to space it at installation. but could the improper distance cause the sensor to send a signal 100% of the time? Anyone have any ideas about this? or is there something else in the system that could cause this. Am I being super ********?
I have already come to terms with the fact that I will have to tear apart the front of this guys motor to get to the ckp and double check/fix what the previous guy did, and have prepared the owner for such an event, but I'm curious as to whether or not there is something else I can be looking for while doing it. I'f had CKPs go out on me before, but never had one give me those test results. phew that was long
brendan
