I bought a 1994 Dakota with a 318, manual trans that didn't start. Towed it home, now I'm troubleshooting the wiring but I'm stuck. I re-soldered the notorious splices under the fuse box, didn't help, but didn't hurt since they looked crappy. I had my dad helping me today and we checked the voltage on the coil's positive lead and then at the switched side of the ASD relay with the key on. I only read 8 volts at both, the relay's hot side has 12 volts.

Any ideas on my next step? I was thinking one of the splices between the ASD relay and the injectors, coil and O2 sensor.

 

Does the starter work?
Did you check for fuel pressure?
Did you check for spark at the plugs?

 

Didn't specify that. It cranks no problem, so the starter works. Haven't checked fuel pressure- that's next. We tried holding a spark plug to ground while cranking and nothing, which led us to start checking voltage at the coil, etc, when we found out we had 8 volts at the coil.

 

Got the problem fixed. Turns out the ground for the ECM was bad. There's a strap between the alternator bracket and intake manifold that I didn't even realize was a ground that is broken:



I found I had no continuity to the battery ground terminal from the ECM connector so I started tracing the wires out, turns out the test port shares a ground (black/tan wire) with the ECM, so I jumped from its ground to the nearest screw on the firewall.:



With that done I had continuity between the ECM ground and the battery, so I tried starting it and it started right up. It stalls at idle now, I'm hoping that's because the gas in the tank is probably two years old, but I'll tackle that problem sometime soon.

So if you go through the trouble to fix the splices, etc and your truck still won't start, check the ground strap between the intake manifold and alternator. I have no clue why it would break, but mine did at some point. Just more stuff to pick up at Pic-a-Part.