QuestionRoland, my 96 Stratus suddendly cut off while driving and will not restart. My mechanic replaced the fuel pump, the distributor, and the battery. Still the car will not restart. What else could the problem be? I have heard mention of something called the crank sensor...please help!
AnswerHi Peter,
The mechanic seems to enjoy throwing parts at the problem, unless he had read the memory of the engine controller and actually got a fault code that indicated that the cam sensor (located in the distributor) had failed. That '96 model evidentally can be read either with a diagnostic readout box or via the check engine light using the ignition key:"on-off-on-off-on and leave on" doing that in an elapsed time of five seconds or less. Then watch the check engine light which remains 'on' to begin to flash, pause, flash, etc. Count the number of flashes before each pause. Then repeat to get an accurate count. Once you have the numbers, combine them in pairs in the order of appearance, to form the two digit fault codes. The code for the crank sensor is 11, for the cam sensor is 54. You can get a code translator at www.allpar.com/fix/codes.html
The crank sensor is at the seam between the engine and the transmission at about 2 o'clock as you view the engine length wises from the left side of the car. It has a three-wire plug (gray/black, orange/white, light blue/black). It is easy to replace, just remove the old, put the new one in making sure that the tip which contains a sacrificial paper spacer is in contact with the flexplate, and tighten it down. You can check whether it is good or not too with a voltmeter and by hand cranking the engine with a ratchet on the crankshaft pulley bolt. The voltage between the gray/black and light blue/black wire should vary from 5v to 0.3v about a dozen times for each full crank turn. The ignition switch has to be in the run position to measure anything and you probe through the wires to hit the conductor using a fine pin to pentrate the insulation.
I don't know what led the mechanic to replace the distributor and the fuel pump unless you weren't getting neither spark nor fuel pressure. That could be due to a failed crank or cam sensor, but he should have gotten a fault code to find out which before substituting any parts.
If it proves to be the crank sensor then he should make good on the unnecessary parts. It also could be the ASD relay by the way, instead of the sensors. But the code readout should tell all. The last code of the readout is always 55 which means "end of readout".
Roland
