Cadillac Repair: car stopped running, no start

Question
My car just stopped running.  I thought it was out of gas but it will not start even though I put in ten dollars worth of gas and primed the carburator.  It is a 1984 cadillac eldorado.

Answer
Hi Bonnie,

       For your problem there is no set solution. Some testing needs to be done to isolate the problem. Since you put gas into the throttlebody and the engine didn't attempt to start but turned over normal that points to a spark problem. On a car that old the 2 most common problems were the ignition coil inside the distributor cap and the ignition module inside the distributor. Other less common are the polepiece, intermal distributor wireing harness and the ECM/engine computor. Sometimes the distributor cap gets so worn out that the center rotor button area burns up and all thats needed is a new cap and rotor. It might be a good idea to have it towed to your mechanic for a diagnostic because there could be several things keeping the engine to start and they would be able to find out for sure what it is. Otherwise if the cap and rotor looked ok then replace the coil and module and see what happens. Then take it in if it doesn't start.

       Hope that helps get the engine running. Bill