Help ! - Another it won't start

[adrians]

Help !

I can't get my 81 FI spider ( Ex Turbo) to start.

Cleaned and 'fixed' a number of things last weekend ( mainly ign. coil ), then the car won't crank .... lots of checking and rechecking. I thought the battery had died, however the autoelectrician said it was ok, turn out to be the 'build-up' on the battery terminal connectors.

Also cleaned around the TPS heard a 'crack noise' - which as I thought - one of the old wires cracked/broke. Went and brought a new connector ( my TPS connector only used 2 wires/pins - closest to the cam housing (2 Red) and the middle one (13 Yellow) - 3 NOT USED) - I believe this is becuase the car still has it's Turbo switches connected.

So today check all the usually things - Car is cranking but won't fire, I placed a multimeter on the fuel pump terminals, and it reads 8.59V when cranking, so I have the AFM and Fuel Pump working - correct ? I photographed the ign. coil prior to removal and cleaning - so I know that back togeather correctly !

Now I've run out of ideas ! ! !

[rlux4]

Adrian, I can tell you what caused my car to crank and not start, hopefully it will be the same on yours. The inline fuse with the brown with white stripe wire feeds the ECU. If it's blown, you won't get signal from the ECU to control spark, or squirt the injectors. The two inline fuses are up behind the fuse panel amongst the rats nest of wires, two red plastic fuse holders, they twist apart into two halves to get the fuse out. Check this. Hey, you could get lucky.
Ron

[adrians]

Ron,

Had visually checked already, however when back and recheck with a multimeter - All are ok ...

I now going to remove the spark plugs and clean them to see if that helps !

Regards

[So Cal Mark]

I get the impression you had some things disassembled. Have you checked for ign spark? injector pulse?

[adrians]

Yes, I admit it, I played around with everything ! ! !

I remove the entire ignition pack and cleaned and polished up the heatsink, I removed the control module but never disconnected from the ignition coil. Replaced all the wires according the photo's I took first up.

Updated ....

There is no spark - the coil produces a spark if connected to a battery ( correctly ) , the coil has the correct ohms, as does the resistance from the coil to the ground, - so I assume the ignition module must have died.

( I did all the tests as per the workshop manual ! )

Is my assumption correct before I buy a new module !

Regards

[So Cal Mark]

do you have power to the + side of the coil when the key is on? If so, the test light should pulse if connected to the - side of the coil while cranking. If the coil is producing spark when hot wired, it doesn't sound like a module problem it sounds like a ign switch problem

[adrians]

Thanks Ron and Mark !

Car is running again .....

Thanks for the idea of rechecking the wires to the coil. I was working from a slightly out of focus photo of the coil and wiring prior to mismantling it ...

The pink and brown/white are both badly discoloured and the blur in the photo didn't help. So I had them backwards. Funny how I still had + power to the + connector on the coil with the wrong wire connected. Also didn't help that I had a small font on the printouts from Brad's wiring diagrams.

Well at least I didn't cook the control module ! ( They're $115.00 here )

Thanks again

[rlux4]

That's great Adrian. You know, the good thing about getting these things figured out is, next time you'll be helping someone else with the same issue.
Ron