[Dvel]

While my wife was driving down the road yesterday the car stalled. Tried to restart it and the engine would only start if a foot was slammed on the accelerator. The condition felt like a miss - initially. Now we have a crank - but no start condition regardless if your foot is on the accelerator or not.

Has about 200k miles. Timing belt has been done in the past but not recently.

What we've done so far:

- Check for spark on all four cylinders. Weak spark, but it's there.

- Removed all four spark plugs and have some fuel coming to the cylinders.

- Also getting compression from the cylinders. Can't tell how strong because we have no compression gauge today. Will borrow one and test that.

- Pressure test fuel system at the filter. It was 45 psi.

- No codes.

- We assume the crank shaft sensor is working because we're getting spark. Is this an accurate assumption?

- Ether directly into throttle body did nothing. No backfire and no attempt to start.

- Checked the electric connector to the IAC valve. Two/Three pins are getting power - but I haven't found a pinout for them.

In particular, I'm really interested in what appears to be a weak spark. Is there a way to tell if the coil packs are working correctly? Is there a pin out somewhere I've been unable to find?

I appreciate any and all suggestions to help get this thing back on the road.

 

[LugNut]

The coil packs can die suddenly, as I found out on my 2000 recently. But unless hit by lightning, etc., only one of the two should have failed, and the engine run but very poorly. And I got an error code.

So unless she ran out of gas , I'd guess it was the timing belt. Fortunately the 3SFE is supposedly a noninterference engine.

Go with a Gates or better quality belt if that's it -- skip the cheapos. I learned that too the hard way; the cheapo stretched to the point of jumping.