QuestionI have a '95 town and country van that was left running wiht the hood up in a rainstorm after jump starting it with jumper cables. The lights had been left on the night before discharging the battery. (never lend a car to a freind while you are working on their problems, they will just keep causing you more)
Alegeldy the engine was running fine and charging the battery when the rain storm came up. The user had returned to the van and foun that it had stalled and tried to start it to no avail. Upon checking on it the following warm and dry day I found the same effect, a lot of mis-firing, maybe one or two cylinderers running, the smell of gas coming out the exhaust, backfiring of unburnt fuel in the exhaust, etc. I pulled the front 3 plugs check them for spark while laying them on the intake manifold wires connected. Despite the fact that two of them are wet anf gas fouled they sparked. The plugs were quite worn so I replaced the front three with new resistor plugs with a 0.050" gap. Upon starting the engine I got the same effect, misfires, unburt fuel backfiring in th eexhaust, and maybe one or two of 6 cylinders firing with power but not enough to keep the engine turning when the starter is disengaged.
The battery is holding a 12.8 or better voltage thru this so I am thinking there is enough voltage for the ECU to run properly to sequence the spark.
Initally I thought there was some possibility of water in the gas as it had been filled a day before and had sat on alevel space while idling and possibly got a good slug of water into the injector fuel galley causing some of the fouling problems. I had added a 8 oz of gas line drier and cycled the ignition swithch several times to cycle the fuel pump and get the fuel in the galley purged. After changing at the three front plugs and replacing the wires (one broke in the process) We have tried running the engine on short shots of either while cranking the starter for 5 second intervals and holding the throttle at a mid position to clear out any possible water that may be hanging around in the fuel galley or above the injectors in the line but even with the ether the backfiring and misfires still are present.
Its starting to look like the ignition/spark sequence is not right for some reason but the connector to the ECU and everything on the engine appears to be dry.
Will towing it to a diagnostic station reveal anything usefull?
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
AnswerHi Joel,
I think getting a readout of the fault codes is always a good place to begin but you don't have to tow it, you can get them yourself in all likelihood. Just turn the ignition switch: "on-off-on-off-on and leave on" doing that in less than 5 seconds elapsed time. Then watch the check engine light to begin to flash, pause, flash, etc. Count the number of flashes before each pause, group the numbers you get in pairs to form two digit numbers and those are the codes. The last set of flashes will be 5 in each, e.g. the number 55 which is the code for "end of readout."
You can get a code translation at
www.allpar.com/fix/codes.html
but that is just the beginning of what to do about a code. So write back and tell me the codes you get and which engine you have there. Not everything is monitored by the powertrain controller but it is always good to see what it has noticed is defective. Checking for spark at all 6 plugs might be good to do also as a starter if you can get to them. It wasn't clear to me if all 3 of the front 3 showed spark.
So that is a start. Thanks for the very complete write up of the history.
Roland
