all 4 plugs are equally wet?

air leaks in the exhaust manifold will suck in fresh air, which will fool the O2 sensor into thinking the engine is too lean, so it will fatten it up.

a bad ECT (Engine Coolant Temp sensor) (or its wiring) could cause the ECU into thinking the engine is too cold, so its richening it up intentionally. while i wouldn't think that would be so extreme as to flood the cylinders its hard to say. the best way to test the ECT is to get the engine hot, then unplug the ECU and measure the resistance of the ECT at the plug that goes into the ECU... get one reading while its warm and another a few hours later when its cold...

 

I would say they're equally wet. Problem is in can't keep it running long enough to warm up. We did try to fool the coolant sensor by unplugging it and jumping it with a paperclip.

 

the CTS has two wires, both of which are seperate thermisters connected to chassis ground (via the body of the sensor). one is wired to the ICU and the other to the ECU, so shorting those two pins together probably did nothing, yuou'd need to short both of them to ground to simulate your really hot engine (really, it should be about 250 ohms for a typically hot engine).

reason I suggest measuring the resistance at the ECU plug is to includie the wire harness in the test.

 

Thanks, I was talking to my dad whose an old school car guy. he seemed to think that there is an issue with the FPR. He said although I'm showing around 300 kpa on the pressure test where the fuel line connects to the rail, he thinks that maybe the piston inside the FPR is not working and its pushing the 40 psi of fuel into the injectors. with dry cylinders and dry plugs it fired over right away. Holding my foot on the pedal about half way it was running, but seemed like it was misfiring. At one point it smoothed out but only for a few seconds then started missing again. Once the second round of misfiring occurred that is when it eventually stalled out. Even though it pushed the pedal closer to the floor. could the internals of the regulator be malfunctioning but not involve rupture of the diaphragm?

 

the FPR is a release valve. any pressure above its rated 42-44 (or 36-38) PSI is sent back to the gas tank via the return line.

 

Reading back through the thread, I noticed we did not pull the vacuum line off the fpr when we did the pressure test. Would that affect the results

 

Yes, the fuel pressure will be be about 9psi lower with the vacuum hose attached. This means that if you are running 43psi with the vacuum line attached, you would actually be getting 52ish psi where you should be getting 36psi. If there is no obstruction in the return hose or the vacuum line, this points to the FPR being bad. I think.

Check your oil level, you probably have a lot of gas in there. Change the oil, then change it again when this is resolved.

 

If you decide to retest, the vac line needs to be capped and the pressure should be 36.2 with the vacuum line off.

 

We may do that. Also some advice I received is the possibility of low spark to the plugs. I was able to hold onto the plug wire bare handed and hold the plug against the block and wasn't getting zapped

 

Checked vac line no fuel coming out. We did check the timing marks and the top gear is 1 tooth off when the crankshaft is turned to zero. Gonna reset the timing tomorrow and see what happens

 

We checked some things today using a scan tool plugged in between the harness and the ecu. The coolant sensor read a voltage of 3.39 at 30 deg F. Our next step is to pull the fuel rail and check the spray pattern of the injectors. Agree?

 

Is there fuel returning to the tank?

 

Yes. I pulled the return line and fuel was flowing into the dish I put in there to catch it

 

Update: got the car back from the shop. Originally they adjusted the timing of the distributor, fired up, then nothing again. Had to replace the distributor, cap, button, ect, and timing belt. $577 later and Everything is running and sounds great. Thanks again to everybody for their input

 

So, what was causing the NO START?

 

Evidently the distributor. But I went out this morning and started it. 2 minutes later it died and won't restart. They're coming out to look at it

 

The saga has concluded. They came out put new Bosch platinums in and it fired right up. Took it back to the shop and found out someone had messed with the fuel adjustment on the maf. They fixed that and its been running ever since.

 

bosch platinums are in fact the wrong spark plugs for a red block, the ignition system is optimized for Bosch Super copper plugs, W7DC on most of them.

 

It originally had NGK and they told me the OEM plugs are, I thought they said Bosch platinums. It seems to be running OK. Should I be concerned

 

I confirmed Bosch w8dc plugs were installed. Are those OK verses the w7dc?