Car was running fine for 1 hour before it broke down. It made a little bit of an unusual noise when I first started it, but it was also 15 degrees outside so I didn't think too much of it. Car seemed to have no problem running & all gauges and indicators looked fine. Turned off the car and went inside. About 3 hrs later the car wouldn't start. The engine turns over fine, but it never seems to fire. I put a timing light between the coil of #1 sparkplug & the sparkplug wire and didn't see any fire occurring. The coil windings seem fine.

I have a Haynes manual which told of a few things to check with a digital voltmeter. 1st was the cam position sensor, 2nd was the crankshaft position sensor, and finally the ASD (Automatic shutdown) relay.

1. The cam position sensor seemed perfect.

2. The crankshaft position sensor seemed a bit off in that according to the Haynes manual the sensor itself should be putting out a changing voltage between 0.3V & 5 V when the engine is turning, I'm only reading between 0V & ~2.5V when the engine is turning. This does concern me. The supply voltage going to the sensor looked fine. (8.8V) I did however notice that this is a Hall-Effect sensor, not magnetic like the Cam Position sensor, so maybe the voltages should be different and Haynes is wrong?

3. Finally the ASD relay itself seemed good, but the voltages on the PDC to the relay seemed odd. The common feed (#30) looked good, but the Coil Battery socket on the PDC (#86) which should only have voltage on it when the key is ON according to the manual, had 12V all the time, even if the key was turned off and removed altogether.

To me the last two seem strange, but I've heard the these Haynes manuals are prone to have errors in them, so I didn't know if any of these seemed to be obvious problems or not.

Any help would be tremendously appreciated.

Thanks,

-Tim

 

Well im sure you may know but the CPS makes sure that the timing is running smoothly. If the timing is off the CPS makes the engine shut down. I had this same problem in a Jeep when I did an engine swap.

I would check with a dealer (by phone) and see what voltage those are supposed to be putting out. You obviously have some sort of timing problem. Have you messed aroung with any timing adjustments at all?