Cadillac Repair: 91 Buick Riveria, buick riveria, crankshaft sensor

Question
Sorry, this is not a Cadillac question. My 91 Riveria will quit running after you drive about 1 mile. After about 45 min. it will start up and you can drive 1/4 mile and it will quit again. I have replaced the coil pack's, ign.module, fulepump,fuelpump relay,plug's and plugwires.THE CAR HAS 101,000 MILES ON IT. The service engine light is not on and it is not flashing a code. Any ideas? A tech. said the comp. did not give a code. It has a 3.8 engine.

Answer
Hi Glen, Looks like you replaced some potential trouble spots. With a problem like this it would be good to know if it is spark or fuel related. Having replaced the pump and relay I would like to think they are good. The 2 things that could also cause this are the ECM/computor and the crankshaft sensor. There is a real good trouble tree in the better shop manuals that will walk you through a series of tests called "cranks but won't start". If I had to make a guess then I would suspect that the crankshaft sensor is the culpret and going down through the chart would help confirm what is bad. Maybe you could get the tree by visiting the Buick dealer and get them to make a copy if they still have the book. Otherwise All Data.com is a very good source of information and you subscribe in 1 year intervals and 1 repair like this will pay for the subscription because it is less that 1 hour at the shop. Hope that helps. Bill