Mitsubishi Repair: 92 dimented, crank sensor, sick computer

Question
my wife's 92 diamante has issues sometimes it wont start, alarm going off in the middle of the night for no reason, we had to add a button for the ignition due to the factorie ones failure about a year ago. this morning she tried to start it and the chip under the steering collom smoked and melted!!! is there anyway to bypass it? we are on a limited income so any do it yourself help would be helpful. thank you , Angelo

Answer
Tanya & Angelo: Look I understand about being on a limited income. But this sounds like a sick computer, as it is setting the alarm off in the middle of the night for no reason, the car won't start, ignition problems and then that chip smoking then melting. Because there should have been a fuse that blew out before the chip melted. So your car has some problems. You could try taking the neg cable off the battery for about 5 minutes, put it back on that will reset the computer and see if that helps at all. When it the last time you did a good tune up? Stark plugs, wires, distributor cap and rotor? In the distributor cap is a sensor called a crank sensor. If that gets weak it will causes problems with the car starting right. When changing stark plugs and their wires remember to do one at a time. Remove the old stark plug, its wire and then put the new stark plug in and then its wire; one at a time. Go like that with all of them. So you do not get them mixed up. The problem is do you know which chip melted? Because it might be something very important and not one you want to bypass it. You should also check your car for a short someplace, because sounds like that after the problem being the computer. One way to check for a short would be to borrow a voltmeter from someone or buy one. They do not cost a lot, get a repair manual for your car, they cost around $20.00 at a parts store or cheaper on ebay. You would need the manual to know what readings you should be getting. Some libraries have these repair manual for your car too. Some libraries will let you check the book out or else you can make copies of the book for what you need. And you could then find out if there is a short in your car some place. There is all kinds of wires running in the steering columm, so you could have a problem in that. But yet the tune up to help the car start better and then find a way to check the car out for either a short, as in two wires touching that should not be doing this or it could be the car's computer. I hope this helps some and good luck! Linda