If this sensor is bad, would it cause the car not to start at all??
The car doesn't spit or sputter or anything, it just cranks and cranks and cranks, with no signs of life....
It is pretty warm outside and never sees very cold temperatures(I live in Alabama)

 

no, it should start with a dead coolant temp sensor..

no start at all, could be dead crank position sensor, bad fuel pump relay or fuel pump, bad ignition power module or coil, broken timing belt, bad radio suppression relay. or something else.

first step, determine if you ahve spark, and if you're getting gas.

 

Its getting spark at the plugs and the coil, the fuel pump cuts on, gas comes out of the bleeder valve thing on the underside of the fuel rail, when I pulled the plugs they were wet with gas, kind of seemed like it was flooded. The engine seems to be in time, I put it at TDC, and pulled distributor cap and rotor button was lined up perfectly at cylinder #1.

The first time I tried to crank it yesterday I sprayed some starting fluid through a vacuum inlet on the intake and it made a different sound than just cranking which led me to believe that all it needed was gas. I went out and bought some gas and put in about a gallon or more. Keep in mind the car has been sitting for a year or more, so mixing that new gas with the old gas that was in the tank probably wasn't a good idea.... But ever since I put in the new gas it never did any other than just crank...

So I'm at the point now of thinking that it is a messed up coolant temp sensor.

BTW: I checked the codes and on plug 2 it was code 1-2-3, plug 6 it was code 2-2-4, which are bad signal from the ECT. Those were the only two codes that I got

To add even more to the fact that its the CTS, the previous owners had the radiator fan hard wired to a switch that ran to the battery. My guess is because the fan would not automatically turn on by itself(sign of a bad CTS)

 

the fan is on its own thermostat thats on the radiator, and forced on by the air conditioning.

disconnect the skinny vacuum line to the back of the fuel pressure regulator, and briefly crank it, is gas pouring out of there? that means the FPR is perforated, and potentially could flood the engine.

remove the oil cap, look inside at the camshaft, and have someone crank the engine, does the camshaft turn? ideally, remove the spark plugs and do a compression test on all 4 cylinders.

The ECT (Engine Coolant Temp sensor) has two seperate temperature senstive resistors, both go to ground. one is wired to the ECU (Fuel Injection computer) and the other to the ICU (Ignition Control Unit). remove the passenger kick panel, and the plastic side panel on the right side of the passenger foot well (just forward of the right door). behind that is the ECU. switch the ignition off, and disconnect the battery ground cable to be safe. remove the big connector from the ECU, and if you shine a bright little flashlight in that plug (on the harness side), you can see the pin numbers. use a digital meter in OHMS mode, put one lead on pin 5 (ground) and the other lead on pin 13 (ECT) and you should read about 2300 ohms if the engine block is at 68F, and as low as 1300 ohms if its 100F (its probably somewhere between these this time of year). plug the ECU cable back in.

the ICU is against the firewall behind the glovebox. unplug ITS connector, read its pin numbers. ohm meter, one lead on pin 20 (ground), and the other lead on pin 2 (ECT), you should see about the same resistance as you did on ECU pin 13.

if either of these is completely open circuit, the wire is broken. if its short to ground (0 ohms), there's an electrical short. any value thats wildly out of range suggests a bad ECT.

if you remove the ECT from the engine, and put it in 200F water (near boiling), it should be as low as 190 ohms, and at freezing (ice water), 6000 ohms, either pin measured to the body of the ECT.

now, if your ECT is ok, then I wonder if your AMM is bad. shut the car off, unplug the AMM, and try starting the car. it should run in 'limp mode' where its too rich, burns too much gas, and only has about 1/2 horsepower with sluggish response. always switch the car off before plugging or unplugging the AMM.

 

Alright Pierce! Thanks so much! I'll check all of this out in the morning, sure would be nice if it was just a broken cable or a short, or even just that the connection to the ECT is corroded, because I didn't get to check that out yesterday.

And the camshaft and all of that does turn, I checked all of that fun stuff out already, but I may also do a compression test tomorrow also, just to check it out. How much compression would be idea?

I'll check all of that out and report back tomorrow, thanks again!

 

Yeah its the coolant temp sensor for sure, here's a picture of the old one

 

too blurry to see anything.

so is it shorted to ground, or is it open?

 

Blurry, yes. Still doesn't look like the temp. sensor.

A bad sensor makes for hard starts, prolonged cranking, but it does start eventually as enough gas gets to the chamber.

 

Sorry guys, I did that on my phone, but yeah its toast, like before I even put a wrench to the insides completely fell out, heres a better picture hopefully haha... its like the plastic insides had melted and made the sender seperate

Which this kind of scares me because what if the engine was ran really hot and melted the plastic, makes me wonder if anything else got melted or broken, ya know?

 

and what I'm really wondering is if a mixture of bad things would cause the car not start, like it has bad/old gas, the ecu has been reset, and the coolant temp sender is really bad.
Would all of these factors go into play and just make it were it doesn't start??

 

So the first picture was of the sensor plug and wiring which looks terrible. I wonder how it got like that? The sensor itself looks like some aftermarket type, but it may or may not be bad. The plug and wiring is definitely bad.

Bad gas or "reset ECU" can cause no start as well. The sensor, not so much a no start but a difficult start. All these together, sure, may cause problems.

 

Its definitely an original part, it had Volvo on the plastic that wasn't melted haha.

And alright, well I'm hoping that when I replace the sensor in a couple hours it will make it easier to start, I'll also shoot some starting fluid in the throttle body to compensate for the bad gas issue

But I'll be back later y'all, thanks!

 

Well there's finally signs of life with her, the fuel pressure regulator is good too btw, I checked it out. I really think it's all boiling down to a tank of bad gas, because I pumped a few bottles of the old gas out and it barely burns. But it's finally hitting like it wants to start but that bad gas just isn't letting it...

Just I just pump all of that bad gas out and put new in it? And if so, what's the easiest way to do that? There's about a half a tank in it...

 

if you can borrow a fuel transfer hand pump, you could suck it out the gas filler pipe (with a suitable hose, of course).

or, disconnect the gas line into the fuel injection rail, and connect it to a hose to a container, and hot-wire the fuel pumps, but this will push all the bad gas through your fuel filter. if you put the car up on ramps or stands, and disconnect the hose that comes from the gas tank into the filter+mainpump assembly, and run THAT into a container, then hot wire just the tank pump, that would be better. WATCH OUT FOR SPARKS AROUND FUEL VAPORS.

a half tank is going to be like 6 gallons or something .. thats a lot of bad gas to dispose of.

 

Well I guess the only way I really could do it would be to let it go through the filter because the car is on a hill and I really don't have a way to move it right now...

So what's the easiest way to hot-wire the fuel pumps?

 

pull the fuel pump relay, take two spade lugs on a few inches of wire, plug one into pin 87/2 aka pin 5, and the other into pin 30 aka pin 3, and the pump will stay on as long as that jumper is in place.... pin 3 is always on power direct from the battery, while pin 5 is the power to the pumps.

i guess it would be really smart to wire those two spade lugs to a toggle switch on a foot or two of wire... then that switch would turn on the pumps. use a switch that can handle a few amps not some wimpy little thing...

 

Ok well while I was a work today the guy I'm buying the car from called a mechhanic over without me being there... The mechanic got the car to start for a few minutes and the mechanic is now at the conclusion that the car has a blown head gasket on the exhaust side, but it isn't a bad one.

My question is, how can he tell that that it has a bad head gasket because he didn't put any coolant in it and didn't run it long enough for it to even get warm...

From everything I could see the oil isn't white or chalky from looking at the dipstick and the there isn't any kind of substance in the coolant tank, the spark plugs were black covered with carbon, and were not white as if it was a bad head gasket...

I wish I could have been there to ask the mechanic why he thought it was a bad head gasket because now I don't know if I should buy the car or not, any advice or opinions would be very helpful!

 

Well, HG can get complicated as they separate coolant from oil from compression, and some of these combinations can give crazy symptoms. The scenarios you mention are only a couple of the possibilities.

The mechanic probably took a compression test which is exactly what should be done first to determine if any serious problems were causing the issues. Probably two adjacent cylinders showed low and that indicates HG break there. A HG replacement is as easy as it gets in the b230. If all goes well, one afternoon job, providing the head doesn't need a machine shop visit. Even easier in a NA car.

 

Ohh ok, well thats what I was wondering, and if the head is warped or cracked, how hard is it to find a new one and is it expensive?!

 

I had a cracked head on my kid's 940 turbo, I found one from a list member who had already fully prepped it for a performance build he never did do (he went with a V8 instead), so I got it for a couple $100 total, and it was like new perfect condition.

otherwise, troll craigslist for parts cars, or check your local junkyards, pull head from car that looks otherwise well maintained that has been in a wreck. pulling it in a junkyard, just remove the valve cover, timing belt cover, timing belt, unbolt exhaust header (bring LOTS of Kroil or PB Blaster! and 6-point metric sockets), unbolt intake header, unbolt head from car, and away you go. sometimes its easier to leave exhaust manifold attached, and unbolt the downpipe, take the head+manifold as one piece. you can even use a 240 head, just remove the plug from the back and attach your distributor.