Picked up the car in my signature yesterday, knew ahead of time I might have to replace the motor. I'm going through troubleshooting steps before I jump to that one.

Car was stated to have an SS hood, water was found in the air intake hose pooled up. I don't know if the car ran with water in it, but I do know water at least got into the intake hose while parked. This is the sound it makes when trying to turn it over. My next step was either trying to pull all the spark plugs (baptism by fire!) or check out the starter/flexplate. Let me know if you've heard anything similar. Thanks.

 

Interesting thing is the tach needle isn’t moving, so unlikely the engine is actually turning. (Or the Opti's dead and not producing the signal necessary for the PCM to move the tach.). Noise is maybe the starter beating on the ring gear ? ? ? Just a guess. Pull the plugs and see if you can rotate the crank manually. Maybe water will gush out of one of the cylinders when you pull the plug.

 

Plugs are likely the next step. My assumption is that I would need to pull all of them, that water getting in wouldn’t necessarily route through the intake to the front cylinders. I got a little bit of movement with the breaker bar, but from the top I didn’t have a lot of room to rotate with the hoses. Was going to lift the nose up a bit and go from the bottom. Also neglected to put into neutral when I did it.

I also need to get my kid to try and crank while I listen to where the noise is coming from, maybe take a look at the starter while doing it.

 

Also, being unfamiliar with this engine, I did find two loose plugs. Unsure if they are supposed to go to anything.

 

Blue one appears to be the idle air control motor at the base of the throttle body:

http://shbox.com/1/iac3.jpg

http://shbox.com/1/harness2.jpg

Yellow appears to passenger side O2 sensor, on the Y-pipe below the exhaust manifold:

http://shbox.com/1/harness3.jpg

The big picture, clickable for closer detail (very few differences between 94 and 95)

1995 Z28 A4 Engine Harness

 

Thank you. I'll match those up when I start pulling the plugs later today.

 

Clunking was dead battery. Now with a fresh one, it is a single clunk and no compression. There's liquid in at least one cylinder. I now know my next step.

 

Pulled all the spark plugs, still no movement on the crank. Best hope right now is some rust, and I'm throwing some MMO in the cylinders tomorrow.

 

MMO in, now it's a waiting game. My next post will probably be a success story, or a for sale story.

 

Well, I got it turning tonight. Starter will even crank it over, seems like fine. Plugs go in tomorrow after one last session.

 

I have gotten the crank rotation issue resolved. New plugs are in, and as far as I can tell I hooked the wires back up correctly.

Now the engine will spin over on cranking, but no ignition. I will have to double check, but I don’t recall the tach doing anything but maybe twitching.

I was reading the 96 topic, and my eyes started glazing over a bit with so much information. I’m wondering what my first steps should be to determine the problem. Right now I don’t know if it is fuel or spark.

 

If the car sat unstarted for any period of time, the fuel system may need complete cleaning - tank, fresh fuel, filter, injectors. Do you hear the fuel pump prime for 2-seconds when you turn the key to “RUN”? Check the fuel pressure.

As far as spark, check for spark at several plugs, if no spark, check the spark at the coil wire.

Tach isn’t going to move much. Couple hundred RPM.

The portions of the engine harness visible in the photo look a bit ratty.

 

I’ll have to check on the fuel pump. I know the relay is under the dead pedal, any other fuseable points?

Everything else I’ll have to do some more looking at the service manual. I have been out of this game too long.

First step for sure is grabbing a spark plug light. I still remember how to do that.

 

You can test the fuel pump operation by applying 12 volt power to the “prime connector” near the PCM. Bypasses the relay. Don’t even need to turn the ignition key.

http://shbox.com/1/fuel_pump_prime.jpg

The fuel pump relay gets power to the load side from the same fuse as the PCM. Fuse is in the panel at the end of the dash. This diagram has the fuel pump at the top:

http://shbox.com/1/1995_pcm3.jpg

The signal side of the relay gets 12 volts from the PCM to turn on the pump. The pump should start for 2-seconds when you turn the key to “RUN”. After it shuts off, the PCM will not restart it until it gets the low resolution pulse from the Opti, indicating that the engine is turning.

 

Thank you. Electrical diagrams are probably one of the harder things for me to follow, but I will give it a go.