hey all,

my dad's lt1 will crank and crank and crank, continuously. sometimes it gargles but won't start. my dad can crank his car for almost 10 mins straight. sometimes it ill start but die almost immediately.

my dad has tested the fuel injectors and they are all working fine.

both he and i are at a loss as to where to go.

can anyone help us out? with somewhere to look, or whatever?

any help will be much appreciated !!

thanks

Kyle

 

Could be a ton of things. First two that come to my mind are the optispark and fuel pump. You could see if the car will start using starting fluid, and by checking the FP with the key in the run position. That would give you a decent baseline to get started with. Good luck.

 

Was thinking the same, no fuel or no spark. Check fuel pressure at the schrader valve at the back of the intake manifold with the key on, should hold ~45psi. If that checks out, then check for spark at the plug wire either by forcing an arc to ground or actually using a spark tester while cranking. My guess is that one of these are going to fail. Then troubleshoot from there. If you have a chiltons, section 2-1 (I think, been a while since I've looked) has a very nice "no start" troubleshooting guide.

Good luck.

 

Could be a broken timing chain like me.

 

hey thanks guys

i was just out checking things, i turned the car on and primed the car, checked to see if there was fuel at the schrader valve and there is, i don't know what the pressure is since i don;t have a guage that hooks up to the schrader valve but there is fuel there.

i'm not very familiar with the opti-spark system at all so i have no idea where to go with that, although looking at changing the plug wires does not look like a walk in the park.

how likely is it for the timing chain to be broken? wouldn't it make a noise since there is a lose chain in the cover? i just don't think this is the problem but thanks for the heads up regardless

thanks again, hope the little info helps ....

Kyle

 

Before tearing into the opti, look into more basic things like the COIL AND COIL COIL WIRE. Make sure that you are getting a signal to the coil, and make sure that the coil wire registers little or no resistance with an ohmmeter. I changed out my coil, and mine wouldn't start unless I pressed on the throttle a little bit. Turned out that the coil wire was bad. A good rule of thumb is to start with the most basic components and work you way up. Same goes for cost. The most basic components are the cheapest, and the more complicated they get, the more expensive they are.

 

Still not conclusive but if we assume that it has fuel PRESSURE at the rail then next up check for spark at a plug. Can be as simple as inserting something conductive into the plug wire (just remove the easiest to get to from the spark plug) and holding that near ground while someone cranks. You should get a nice strong arc from the plug wire to ground (better yet would be to get a spark tester from Checker/Pep Boys etc and hook it to the plug wire and look for the spark, but the previous is free). Anyway, gotta have both fuel AND spark.

Good Luck again.