Chrysler Repair: starting problem, crankshaft pulley, pulley bolt

Question
i have a chrysler sebring,1998,v6,2.5 lxi, coupe, i am not getting any spark/fire when i turn the ignition. what coul cause this and where should i start

Answer
Hi Roderick,
I would suspect that one of the engine rotational sensors, cam or crank is not working. But you need to find out which. The cam is in the distributor and the crank is located at the seam between the engine and the bell housing on the back side, just above the transmission housing.
I think we need to focus on the distributor. Start by removing the cap and verifying the there is connectivity between the spring tip on the rotor and the metal tip of the rotor aa if that were 'open' there would be no spark.
Then make sure that at the single pin, that has a wire attached to it of the 2-pin plug at the distributor, that you are getting 12V when the engine is being cranked. That is the power for the primary coil that should be supplied by the autoshutdown relay if both sensors were good.
Then if that is present let's check for continuity of the wires from the 6-pin plug to the engine controller:
1 black/light blue to pin 43
2 orange or orange/white to 44
3 tan/yellow to 33
4 not used
5 black to ground
6 black/gray to either 11 or 4 (I can't be sure which)

Then I would probe the wires at the crank sensor with fine pins, and measure the voltages with the ignition 'on' while turning the crankshaft pulley bolt by hand with a socket and breaker bar on the pulley bolt:
8V on the orange/white wire;
and between the gray/black and black/light blue that you get an oscillating voltage from 5 to 0.3V three times for each full turn of the crank.
You can do the same test for the cam sensor probing between the tan/yellow and the black/light blue wires as listed above, in fact I would do that test before doing the crank sensor test.

I am using the wiring diagrams for the 2.5L for the '96 Cirrus and the '98 Sebring convt. I have a '95 Sebring Coupe manual but I suspect it is not exactly applicable to your '98 because that was the first year of the vehicle. So if there are discrepencies let me know and I'll give you wiring assignments from that '95 manual.
Let me know if you find something interesting or the answer as to why no spark.
Another approach entirely is to try to get the fault codes, but that requires a fault code reader that plugs in under the dash to a socket to the left of the steering column. If you know someone who has one, that would be a direct way to find out what is wrong. If you get any codes let me know and we'll go from there.
Roland