Yesterday I was at a stop sign and as I was taking off the van fell flat on it's face. It picked back up but would fall on it's face if I pushed on the gas. Luckily I made it home because now it just cranks and cranks and cranks and will not start even with starting fluid. I put a metal rod coming from the coil wire and looked for spark against the metal and did have spark. I also did it with the spark plug and also had spark. Please help me out.

I have replaced the following
1. Spark Plugs
2. Wires
3. Rotar and cap
4. Crank Sensor

I can hear the Fuel Pump kick on when I turn the key. I did get a couple of codes from the on board OBD. P300 P302 and P304. I found all the codes meanings and thought replacing what I did would take care of it.

I need my van by Friday and have no clue.

 

Did you check the pickup coil in the distributor for continuity?

 

I just tried again with the ignition coil wire to get a spark to arc, I couldn't get one. I placed a 1/4 inch allen wrench in the coil wire and tried to get a spark and couldn't get it to jump to any bolt or even the place it goes on the cap.

I have no idea what a pick-up coil is or continuity. I am auto- mechanic illiterate

 

The pickup coil (or cam sensor) is inside the distributor below the rotor. It's basically a coil of wire that has a piece of metal pass through it to send a pulse to the computer. These pulses coincide with the position the rotor is at to make spark. If this coil has a break in it, then there is no continuity and no pulse is sent...no pulse, no spark.

 

AutoZone sucks.....

They sold me the wrong crank sensor. I just don't know how it happened. I had it towed to the garage and it was the Crank Sensor. He started it right up when he changed the crank sensor and told me it was the wrong one. I am going to AutoZone and giving that little punk a piece of my mind. He cost me a 60.00 tow and 262.00 for the garage work. If he would have given me the right Crank Sensor yesterday I would have fixed it and saved 322.oo

 

Was there any visible difference between the two when you compared them?

 

Alloro,
Is the Crank sensor also called the Hall effect sensor which I have on my '89 in the distributor.

I remember reading that the aftermarket H.E. sensors often don't work properly.

My Elchin one seems to bee fine. I wound up replacing it unneccessarly when my PCM took a dump due to a tranny wire grounding out on the bell housing.

I keep the original in the glove box.

 

When we took them out of the box and compared them the sensor had no noticable difference. However the plug was a different design, but it fit into the plug attached to the van. We just thought it was an after market way of making them since AutoZone looked it up in the computer and I watched him. I guess if I would have thought about it longer I could have seen it was not the right one. With me not being a mechanic I assumed it was right. I am just glad it was fixed, but wish I could have saved the 320.00 bucks. I did take the sensor back to get 50.00 bucks back so it helped out some.

Alloro, thank you for the help

 

No, the crank sensor mounts in the bellhousing and gets it's pulses from the flywheel. The pickup coil/cam sensor is the Hall Effect sensor in the distributor.