hey guys, first time poster, long time digging through your old posts thanks in advance for any help you can give...
my wifes car has a bad solenoid so we borrowed her moms 94 ram van until i can get a new starter for hers, and of course it broke down on us. what ive got so far is power to the ASD and FP relays, but no fuel or fire. wife says she was sitting in the car line to get the kids from school, started the engine no problem, just as she was about to put it in drive, engine quits and wont restart. cranks fine but wont start. first thing, i think i should clear up some of my assumptions..
1. indicator light - Maint Reqd.. i know its a silly question, but this is dodge's version of CEL correct?
2. the 2 wires at the coil, one should be ground and one should be 12v?
3. the ECU provides ground to the ASD relay and the coil?

ok.. if these assumptions are correct, and i have no CEL with key on, and no ground at the coil or the asd relay.. is there any other possible solution besides a bad ECU?

thanks again
greg in pcola

 

1. Yes
2. One is +12v and the second is a pulse ground provided by the ECU.
3. Yes

No CEL with the key on pretty much means one of 5 things. A bad CEL bulb, no +12v to the ECU, no -12v to the ECU, loose connector to the ECU, or a bad ECU.

 

swapped the bulb with the abs bulb (known good). and checked all fuses, any idea where i could find a pinout for the ecu to check for 12v+ and 12v-?

 

You might look for an official Dodge Shop Service manual for your van on ebay. There will be trouble shooting in the manual.

Jason

 

Do you know if you have power down to your fuel pump? If you do, then the next step is to find out if its delivering fuel at the engine side. If it is then you know its an electrical problem in the ignition system.

While I certainly do not have a shop manual for your particular van, from what I looked up I do believe you have an electric fuel pump. When I trouble shoot, I always try to start simple and go step by step as you appear to be doing.

Since I find your problem interesting, I will do some research and see if I can come up with some better suggestions. I really do not want to just randomly throw stuff out there.

Without getting complicated there is a crank position sensor that might be suspect as well. The bad crank position sensor will almost always cause your car not to start, although the engine will turn over.

Based on my past experiences a no fuel no spark issue can be traced back to a crank position sensor. I am not saying this is absolutely your issue, but it would be another good candidate to check early on.

Hope some of this helps



Jason

 

If all of the good sound advice of electrical concerns mentioned above by the others still isn't the answer, then try these easy fixes ...

- Replace the cap-n-rotor with copper/brass contacts and NEVER aluminum
- Replace the ignition coil
- Inspect the IAC and replace it if heavily carbonized.

The engine did run until placed into gear and died. Without you knowing the performace of this van over the years, you could not determine if the power lose was present. Thus ....
- Check the CAT to see if it clogged. A not so easy job.

 

thanks alot guys for the help, i really appreciate it.. few more things about my progress so far, i bought a $5 test light to make checking and rechecking the fuses a little faster and stumbled on to the key to the problem i think. i was probing the ASD and FP relays, and discovered when i hit one of the pins it caused the relay to close. turns out it was the ground side, i figured i have a bad ground right? so i had already checked all the ground connections i could find and they were all good, so rather than tear apart the harness, i used a short piece of wire and spliced directly from the wire on the ground pin to a lead already coming from the battery and viola! i can hear the FP running! so im thinking cool! its going to start right up! nope.. so, i go back and start checking, turns out now, with the ASD on, i now have 12v between the coil and the frame, but not across the 2 wires, soooo... my conclusion, and please, im open to other solutions, rather not have to buy an ECU especially if its not the cause, is either have a broken wire coming from or going to the ECU or i have a bad ECU..
tell me what you think, and thanks again!
greg