Hello,

I have a 244 89' DL, that suddenly died on me the other day. I was about to park it and it started to smell like gas so I turned it off. When I went to turn it back on it wouldn't start. Replaced the ECU which got it starting again, but now it has awful timing/misfiring. I also replaced the MAF which seemed to mellow it out a bit, but it's still not drivable. I have another 89' 244 so I've been swapping parts hoping to figure out what's failing that way. So far I've swapped the O2 sensor, the plugs and wires, the cap and rotor, and checked the fuses. I also fiddled with turning the distributor cap a bit, but it didn't seem to help so I put it back. I had a mechanic look at it for a week and he left saying he thought it was electrical and pointed to the wiring harness. I've taken apart most of the harness and I can't find any bad wires. He also gave the all clear on the fuel system. The car basically starts and shakes, but wont go anywhere. I've run out of things to test and would love anyones best guess! Thanks in advance.

-Richard

 

Check the timing belt, possible it slipped a notch?

 

1989 is a LH2.4 car, those have electronic timing via a crank-position-sensor, so turning the distributor does nearly nothing (it can move the spark timing off the edge of the distributor posts, which isn't great)

smell like gas bothers me, I'd investigate the gas lines, tank vacuum purge and so forth, looking for traces of fresh leakage around any connectors.

 

Dnarby,

I thought that as well. I already dismantled the belts and found that the the cam and crank were in the proper places.

 

Pierce,

I realized that the distributer did nothing after the fact, probably made matters worse. The peculiar thing about the gas smell is that it has pretty much gone away now. It only smelled of gas the first time it died. Now the most glaring issue is the misfiring. The whole car shakes and giving gas does nearly nothing.

 

pull all 4 spark plugs after your next test run, see if they are all equally light grey and dry, or if any are oily and/or black.

an engine needs fuel, compression, and spark to run.

 

Also, I just replaced the crank position sensor in hopes that would help to no avail. I keep hearing the wiring harness could be the problem. I've torn most of it apart and haven't found anything. Is there a specific place I should examine more closely that could be causing these symptoms?

 

the worst of the wiring was on 81-87 cars. by 88 they had pretty much fixed it, but of course, 20-25 years is a lot of age on this stuff... the CPS's usually fail such that the wire to them is all cracked and corroded. if the wire is in good shape, odds are the CPS is fine and doesn't need replacing.

if the engine coolant temp sensor (ECT) is broken, or its wiring isn't making good contact, that can result in very hard starting, rough running, as the computers think the car is either much warmer or colder than it really is so they give it way the wrong amount of gas and timing advance.

any faults on your on-board-diagonstics? your car has a little block under the hood with some jumpers and a button and LED< that reads out diagonstic codes via counting light blinks, from both the fuel injection (ECU) and ignition (ICU) computers. See Engine and OBD Diagnostic Codes for the details on how to use this and interpret the results.

 

Yeah the CPS is brand new so I'm not worried about that. I check the on-board diagnostics but didn't get any errors back unfortunately. The ECT is going to be the next thing I look into. It looks as though it might be awkwardly placed, but I'll still have a go. Thanks again.

-Richard

 

Why don't you take a compression test? Once I look over an engine and there's no obvious fuel/air/spark issues I take a comp. test to eliminate serious problems like valves, HG, etc.