Any Chevy motor heads here? This one is kicking my butt -

[Snapperhead]

Similar story 10 years ago

Brother n laws 4.6 crown vic wouldnt start , tried all the stuff your trying

Took to Ford Dealer where the "Pros" are

They spent a couple of days trying to get it running , new fuel pump , sensors all over the place , computer , and finally said " we have no idea whats wrong" but heres your bill for 900 dollars

( I would have told them to kiss my ass )

But anyhow , brother n law called me up for advice

Im like , dude theres only one place nobody's looked , pull that front cover

Took the timing cover off , and low n behold , right behind the cover there is a crank sensor wheel that had teeth broken off

Sooooo the computer was watching the crank spin and was like WTF ?

[Poodle Head Mikey]

Speaking of the distributor and it's installation -

Last year (or maybe it was two years ago <g>). I replaced the distributor - because it was cheaper than buying a cap, rotor, and cam sensor separately. The fan shroud is an impossible bastard to remove - it looks to me like a refrigerant line has to be removed before you can get the fan shroud out. So I couldn't get to the timing mark on the crank pulley.

So I thought about it for a while and realized that TDC doesn't mean a thing - so long as the new distributor goes in the same way the old one came out - it can't be wrong.

So I marked the distributor body exactly where the rotor was pointing. Then I pulled the distributor out - which rotates the rotor as the drive gears are helical cut. The I marked the distributor body exactly where the rotor had rotated to coming out.

Then I set the new rotor to point to the exact same rotated spot and slid it in. After it was down solid I checked to make sure that it had un-rotated back to the first position. It had and the truck started and ran well afterwards. 4000-5000 miles and it ran like a rocket.

Last weekend I had yet another guy tell me that it's impossible to change a distributor unless the timing mark is on TDC. But that's obviously not true. All that has to happen is that is go back in the same way the old one came out.

[timebuilder]

You are correct. It is not "impossible." It's just not how they teach that process. Some guys start to think there is only one way to do things.

[Missouri Guy]

Speaking of the distributor and it's installation -

Last year (or maybe it was two years ago ). I replaced the distributor - because it was cheaper than buying a cap, rotor, and cam sensor separately. The fan shroud is an impossible bastard to remove - it looks to me like a refrigerant line has to be removed before you can get the fan shroud out. So I couldn't get to the timing mark on the crank pulley.

So I thought about it for a while and realized that TDC doesn't mean a thing - so long as the new distributor goes in the same way the old one came out - it can't be wrong.

So I marked the distributor body exactly where the rotor was pointing. Then I pulled the distributor out - which rotates the rotor as the drive gears are helical cut. The I marked the distributor body exactly where the rotor had rotated to coming out.

Then I set the new rotor to point to the exact same rotated spot and slid it in. After it was down solid I checked to make sure that it had un-rotated back to the first position. It had and the truck started and ran well afterwards. 4000-5000 miles and it ran like a rocket.

Last weekend I had yet another guy tell me that it's impossible to change a distributor unless the timing mark is on TDC. But that's obviously not true. All that has to happen is that is go back in the same way the old one came out.

This last time you had it out...took same precautions?
Was the backfire coming through the intake?.Most people think that occurs from the timing being to early..but late (retarded) timing can cause back fireing through the intake.
An engine that is slow to rev when nailing the gas in neutral can be caused by late timing.... Can backfire up the intake.. partially igniting the mix in the intake... that mix makes it to the cylinder with the oxygen partially consumed..a cylinder may not fire...when that leaves the cylinder the O2 sensors measure what they see and adjust according... However the adjustment will be wrong.
EFI does not like late timing.
EFI does very poorly with a cylinder miss until it figures out there is a miss.

Example my old Plymouth ... A Spark plug went bad the ceramic separated ..ran very very poor for a short spell (maybe a minute)..would hardly pull itself..the light came on and it got much better...yes I was still down a cylinder but I drove it home while it sounded like a helicopter...The computer knew it was missing on a cylinder and adjusted the fuel mix as a result...it knew the info from the 02 sensors was incorrect due to a missing cylinder.

When I used to mess with GM vehicles that barely ran I would unplug the O2 sensors so the default fuel air ratio would be delivered..which is pretty close on a GM... I would then continue my trouble shooting.
As said EFI will figure out a steady miss on a cylinder and adjust accordingly... but random misfires ... backfiring etc... they are worse than an engine with a carb.





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[Poodle Head Mikey]

I had a similar experience with Ford - 1998 7.3 diesel - except that the total was the better part of ten grand.

Ace Ford in Woodbury NJ

I had two of their 7.3's at the time - drove from the stealership directly to my office and listed both on eBay for $500. each.

PHM
-------

Similar story 10 years ago

Brother n laws 4.6 crown vic wouldnt start , tried all the stuff your trying

Took to Ford Dealer where the "Pros" are

They spent a couple of days trying to get it running , new fuel pump , sensors all over the place , computer , and finally said " we have no idea whats wrong" but heres your bill for 900 dollars

( I would have told them to kiss my ass )

But anyhow , brother n law called me up for advice

Im like , dude theres only one place nobody's looked , pull that front cover

Took the timing cover off , and low n behold , right behind the cover there is a crank sensor wheel that had teeth broken off

Sooooo the computer was watching the crank spin and was like WTF ?

[pageyjim]

I had a similar experience with Ford - 1998 7.3 diesel - except that the total was the better part of ten grand.

Ace Ford in Woodbury NJ

I had two of their 7.3's at the time - drove from the stealership directly to my office and listed both on eBay for $500. each.

PHM
-------

Has the fuel filter been replaced? Any rips or tears in the intake boots? Clean the MAF with MAF cleaner. Check the fuel pressure.

[Missouri Guy]

Has the fuel filter been replaced? Any rips or tears in the intake boots? Clean the MAF with MAF cleaner. Check the fuel pressure.

Those were some Diesel powered engines he had terrible luck with in the past...sound like they are long gone.




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[danielthechskid]

PHM I can't help you with your problem, but I can add this:

I wish that GM weren't so darn schizophrenic about their designs.

What I mean by this is that the way that they do things some times makes no sense at all, and here is but 1 example, and I have many.

For decades on certain engines they used a bypass type ignition system as explained here https://youtu.be/mxPdxGqRWvc where the ignition module controlled the base spark timing for cranking and the computer took over to add advance when running. We're talking ~1980-2009 here.

The trouble is in how many different ways they chose to implement the same thing. The TBI and CCC engines had a distributor, the 60° V6 (3.1/3100/3400 with the exception of the TBI 3.1 in the dustbuster vans) and certain inline 4 cylinder engines got a single 7x crank signal (6 pulses every 60° with an added sync pulse 10° after one of the main pulses), the 90° V6 (Buick 3800/3300) got a dual crank sensor, the Northstar V8 ran 2 crank sensors and the cam sensor all through the ignition module, Etc.

What do they all have in common?

All of those systems have an ignition module sending 1 square wave pulse per cylinder firing event to the computer, so 2x per crank rotation for a 4 cylinder, 3x for a 6 cylinder and 4x for an 8 cylinder on the reference wire, the computer sending back a timing adjusted square wave on the EST wire, and the computer commanding that the module switch to EST mode with 5 volts on the bypass wire.

This means that in theory given the same number of cylinders you could interchange any of these different ignition modules and the crank and/or cam triggers and sensors that go along with and the PCM wouldn't know the difference. You could convert from distributor to distributorless or vise versa.

IOW GM didn't need to have 3 or more different ignition designs that all existed at the same time, they could have just used 1 design for them all.

So PHM your problem isn't just a no-start, it is one of why in the world does your 05 4.3 even still have a distributor at all when GM has had distributorless ignition since the mid to late 80s. For the love of Chrysler when they switched from TBI to the Vortec spider central injection and dropped bypass ignition they could have also gone distributorless. Instead they just designed a different distributor.

And it isn't because of the distributor shaft driven oil pump either, the 60° V6 engines among others still had those too, they just replaced the distributor with a plug that has the drive gear on it.

[Missouri Guy]

PHM I can't help you with your problem, but I can add this:

I wish that GM weren't so darn schizophrenic about their designs.

What I mean by this is that the way that they do things some times makes no sense at all, and here is but 1 example, and I have many.

For decades on certain engines they used a bypass type ignition system as explained here https://youtu.be/mxPdxGqRWvc where the ignition module controlled the base spark timing for cranking and the computer took over to add advance when running. We're talking ~1980-2009 here.

The trouble is in how many different ways they chose to implement the same thing. The TBI and CCC engines had a distributor, the 60° V6 (3.1/3100/3400 with the exception of the TBI 3.1 in the dustbuster vans) and certain inline 4 cylinder engines got a single 7x crank signal (6 pulses every 60° with an added sync pulse 10° after one of the main pulses), the 90° V6 (Buick 3800/3300) got a dual crank sensor, the Northstar V8 ran 2 crank sensors and the cam sensor all through the ignition module, Etc.

What do they all have in common?

All of those systems have an ignition module sending 1 square wave pulse per cylinder firing event to the computer, so 2x per crank rotation for a 4 cylinder, 3x for a 6 cylinder and 4x for an 8 cylinder on the reference wire, the computer sending back a timing adjusted square wave on the EST wire, and the computer commanding that the module switch to EST mode with 5 volts on the bypass wire.

This means that in theory given the same number of cylinders you could interchange any of these different ignition modules and the crank and/or cam triggers and sensors that go along with and the PCM wouldn't know the difference. You could convert from distributor to distributorless or vise versa.

IOW GM didn't need to have 3 or more different ignition designs that all existed at the same time, they could have just used 1 design for them all.

So PHM your problem isn't just a no-start, it is one of why in the world does your 05 4.3 even still have a distributor at all when GM has had distributorless ignition since the mid to late 80s. For the love of Chrysler when they switched from TBI to the Vortec spider central injection and dropped bypass ignition they could have also gone distributorless. Instead they just designed a different distributor.

And it isn't because of the distributor shaft driven oil pump either, the 60° V6 engines among others still had those too, they just replaced the distributor with a plug that has the drive gear on it.

I started to bail in the early 2000s.. I couldn't keep up with the changes .. I had to spend as much time learning as I went along.. vehicles sat longer as a result...my first grab of tools to put in the tray no longer applied.. that slowed me down.. specialty tools were expensive as well.
Transmissions were changing as well.
Different coolant for different vehicles.
Gone was the day of knowing what was wrong with a vehicle in less than five minutes ... I hated changing fuel pumps on GMs as the strap bolts being a half inch longer sure would have made it so much nicer as well as the lines and wires being a touch longer..(I hated them)
American and metric mix on the same vehicle.. under hood components increasingly more difficult to remove.
Bolts seized in aluminum upon arrival... Had to start being careful where you put the lift and so on... I tapped out I had enough... Too many changes to fast. I saw no end in sight.. the changes have slowed down now.. but for several years the rapid changes were a nightmare.... I will say his though we can pack alot more miles on a vehicle now than back in the day

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[Snapperhead]

I started to bail in the early 2000s.. I couldn't keep up with the changes .. I had to spend as much time learning as I went along.. vehicles sat longer as a result...my first grab of tools to put in the tray no longer applied.. that slowed me down.. specialty tools were expensive as well.
Transmissions were changing as well.
Different coolant for different vehicles.
Gone was the day of knowing what was wrong with a vehicle in less than five minutes ... I hated changing fuel pumps on GMs as the strap bolts being a half inch longer sure would have made it so much nicer as well as the lines and wires being a touch longer..(I hated them)
American and metric mix on the same vehicle.. under hood components increasingly more difficult to remove.
Bolts seized in aluminum upon arrival... Had to start being careful where you put the lift and so on... I tapped out I had enough... Too many changes to fast. I saw no end in sight

Ahh the early 2000's was basically working on late 90's vehicles just out of warranty

So we ended up with GD spark plugs blowing out the GD heads and you spend hours trying to re-thread them

Exhaust bolts break off for no GD reason

Spark plugs breaking when trying to REMOVE them ... pfffft , really ??

Oxygen sensors short out throwing all kinds of codes and you have no idea where to begin ...

Ball joints and tie rods lasted 1 year

Intake gaskets were made of shit paper

Oh ... GMs worst mistake was the Cadillac Northstar ..... the GD head bolts pull the GD threads out of the block and were 2 feet long

Fords 6.0 would eat injection pumps for lunch and cost 1 arm and 2 cousins

Then you have VW and Audi who cannot design a GD wiring harness to save their lives , having all kinds of shorts throughout the car forcing you to remove the whole GD interior hunting it down

But yes ... vehicles will go 300,000 miles now if you change the oil and AF frequently

[timebuilder]

Let us not forget the Curse of Lucas........

[pageyjim]

Those were some Diesel powered engines he had terrible luck with in the past...sound like they are long gone.




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It was meant for his current condition. Maybe it would have been better to quote his first post but it was long etc.

With his problem of back firing out of the intake don't you think what I suggested would be appropriate and easy things to check?

Backfiring out of the intake is many times caused by too much air. How do you get too much air? By getting not enough fuel or too much air right?

[Missouri Guy]

Ahh the early 2000's was basically working on late 90's vehicles just out of warranty

So we ended up with GD spark plugs blowing out the GD heads and you spend hours trying to re-thread them

Exhaust bolts break off for no GD reason

Spark plugs breaking when trying to REMOVE them ... pfffft , really ??

Oxygen sensors short out throwing all kinds of codes and you have no idea where to begin ...

Ball joints and tie rods lasted 1 year

Intake gaskets were made of shit paper

Oh ... GMs worst mistake was the Cadillac Northstar ..... the GD head bolts pull the GD threads out of the block and were 2 feet long

Fords 6.0 would eat injection pumps for lunch and cost 1 arm and 2 cousins

Then you have VW and Audi who cannot design a GD wiring harness to save their lives , having all kinds of shorts throughout the car forcing you to remove the whole GD interior hunting it down

But yes ... vehicles will go 300,000 miles now if you change the oil and AF frequently

It was no fun indeed ...we mustnt forget leaking heater cores or evaporators we already hated to change..some become more difficult and the pieces upon removal took up as much room as the vehicle itself!!! Two Bays now taken up !!! With 11 different fasteners
Leaky boots on the front wheels drives...hey I can't get this grease off me..it's permanent alright.... This will look wonderful while I am eating steak tonight
The new danger of airbag deployment.
Alarm systems... Great now I have to go outside and try to turn that off... Why did he turn it on... No one is going to steal it lol.
Have to bleed some coolant systems or the coolant will drop when thermostat finally opens..Or overheat on them after they take possession. Might spend thirty minutes getting one full.
What... I can't reuse these headbolts and they cost a fortune..now the customer thinks I am ripping him off...he wont be back
I was dropping a tank for the fuel pump on an Audi once... just to find out I could get to it from the trunk!!..lift carpet and there is the access.

Have to disconnect the battery for everything ...it's a side terminally and the bolt is often rounded off...Thanks GM a half inch wrench would have been beautiful for this...but nope two cents per vehicle adds up

I can't see the starter...Changing it is not going to be an enjoyable day... Ghetto headliner in your hair as soon as you get in the drivers seat.

I once spent four hours changing a heater hose on one of those small Oldsmobiles... I was awful close to seeing if I could rent a famished Chinese child with very small arms.

Why are all my wires an inch to short I can't get none of this stuff plugged back in without stress on the wires..Thanks GM.
Why do you think your assemblers keep going on strike..they don't like all the changes either.








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[Missouri Guy]

It was meant for his current condition. Maybe it would have been better to quote his first post but it was long etc.

With his problem of back firing out of the intake don't you think what I suggested would be appropriate and easy things to check?

Backfiring out of the intake is many times caused by too much air. How do you get too much air? By getting not enough fuel or too much air right?

Well yes... wrestling the battery distributor and timing chain creates alot of chance for inadvertently damaging or knocking something else loose



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[Missouri Guy]

But yes ... vehicles will go 300,000 miles now if you change the oil and AF frequently

It is very common to see Chrysler based Cherokee Jeeps for sale in that mileage range and beyond ..interiors are kinda cramped ... But Many of them run great considering the weight they are pulling and that they are four wheel drive I been waiting to find a good deal on one with low mileage.. but people around here keep em until they wear em out

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[Snapperhead]

I was dropping a tank for the fuel pump on an Audi once... just to find out I could get to it from the trunk!!..lift carpet and there is the access.

yup .... Got that t-shirt

So you are left standing there pissed off .... and happy at the same time , because Finally they made access to it !!

[Snapperhead]

Have you ever completed a big job .... look down to see a part laying there ... and you realize you have to take the whole thing back apart

Worst one was a C-4 transmission , saw that thrust washer laying there and I may have actually shed a tear

[timebuilder]

Wrestled a PITA oil pan back in the position.... got everything buttoned up..... and saw the oil pump sitting there on the bench.

[timebuilder]

In the late nineties, the Park Avenue chassis also had a trunk access to the fuel pump sender assembly.

[Poodle Head Mikey]

I have heard that Evil-Lucas reference all my life but initially I almost exclusively drove English sports cars and it was never true for me. I always found Lucas electrics basic and simple and easy to diagnose and repair. Almost intuitive in fact. And you could 'see' everything. <g>

One time I took this little girl to a drive-in theater in a Jaguar XKE. Her previous man was an auto mechanic - a rabid Ford or Chevy Man - Hated foreign cars. Towards the end of the film rain started hammering down and people started leaving. We dawdled a bit - just to avoid the crowds you understand - and later; right after I started the car and moved 4-5 feet - every light suddenly went dark. And it was like cave-dark in the car. <g>

Of course I have no idea what the problem is and less than zero interest in getting out of the cozy car into a cold drenching rain. I don't say that of course - instead I calmly say to her:

"Hmmmm . . . that's odd, isn't it? Let me see here . . . . "

I can recall from daylighted-memory that there are two thumb-nuts at the upper corner of the central dash panel. I find those in the pitch darkness and soon find that the panel hinges down - the top swings out and down. When it does a light inside there comes on. Inside there are neat rows of fuse holders - each with a circuit label and . . . . a spare fuse in a little holder.

"Ahhh . . . Exterior Lights - maybe it's the fuse." So I casually install the spare and all the lights work again.

"There you go - nothing to it. Those Brits think of everything."


PHM
-------

Let us not forget the Curse of Lucas........