my car died on the parkway just before it the engine fully warmed up it died w/o warning and would not start back up, just said check gages no check engine

in the past week or so it threw a ses light and stayed on till i shut the car off and it would happen again in another day or more but havent seen it in a while also when it threw a light it also turned the fans on and stayed on till i shut off the engine, i dont have any scanners.(car ran fine the whole time)

got the car home still no fire it cranks but doesent fire, i smell gas i have fuel pressure, i cant get spark at plug wires, checked coil wire to opti, no spark their either , changed coil still no spark, is there a way or instructions on how to check the icm to see if its sending correct power to the coil, also if im not getting spark to the opti from the coil, is it possible that the opti is bad, icm is only like 8 months old opti has maybe 6k miles, (btw my grounds on the bracket were tight as well)

thanks for the help

Frank

 

From Shoebox's site: http://shbox.com/1/4th_gen_tech2.html#opti_test

 

I had that happen to me too. I was giving it some gas then I heard a load pop and while smoke from the passenger side and my car died. Replaced the coil and it fired right up. Still don't know where the smoke came from though.......

My guess is your opti is probably toast.

 

This happened to me a month ago, I was on the freeway and the car just died like someone turned the ignition key off. I too thought it was the opti but it was just my ICM and the wire that connects to it. It seemed like the wire was shorting out the ICM. So get those both changed before going to the opti because the OPTI change is going to be a b1tch.

 

Update!

ok did the test on shoeboxes page, on the connector for the icm i had no voltage on terminals a or d to ground. Checked fuse, and it was blown, put in new 10a fuse and had my proper voltage to ground w/ the coil wires connected as said in instructions. tested terminal b to ground on the ac scale while cranking and got 3.5 v which is in limits of 1 to 4 volts. those are the pulses that trigger the coil to fire. is there a way to test the connectors on the coil or wires to the coil? how bout the opti harness is there a way to test that?

 

ok shes back up and running, it was a bad icm which i think may have blew out the fuse. changed fuse and icm and still didnot want to fire so i checked my coil wire for continuity and surprise surprise... no continuity! put on a new msd one and she fired right up no more problems, i wonder what the code is that is stored in the computer from a few weeks ago?!

i just wanted to thank everyone for helping me find this out

 

THe biggest drawback to theses cars, is how they die randomly anywhere... depending on what sensor feels like acting up. Only thing I really worry about with the car.