Mitsubishi Repair: 1995 Diamante doesnt run, somthing wrong with sensors, mitsubishi diamante, 1995 mitsubishi diamante

Question
HI, I have a 1995 Mitsubishi Diamante LX 3.0 DOHC V6. It has 190,000 on it but it was running great, until someone else took it and used it. She said she was going over tracks and then a clear away and it just died (power steering brakes everything). We ran the codes and it said crankshaft and camshaft position sensor. Are those 2 separate parts or are they one? Where are they located? Another ? is, before the engine was cranking and some times turn over but it would run real hard for like 3 secs and the just cut off, like it was only running on 3 cylinder. Is that because of the sensors? thanks  

Answer
Brad: 190,000 miles is a lot of miles and sensors do start to die around these kind of miles I would not blame the gal driving your car. Unless she was super hard on it but does not sound like it. She just happen to be in the car when it went. The camshaft and crankshaft sensors are in the distributor, now this holds true for the Eclipse models I work on. You need to get yourself a repair manual for your car, any parts store will sell them for around $20.00. They are well worth the money. But I bet if you replaced that distributor in your car, it would fix the problem. A good tune up might be in order too. That problem you talked about is due to those sensors. There are sensors all over your engine, they send their readings to the computer and it then within a few seconds the computer sets the fuel mix for the car to run. So if a sensor is bad then the computer is still trying to run the car on whatever it believes is right. And that of course is not how things are. Hope this helps and good luck!