timing belt ?

Posting year, make and model would help!!

Glenn Beasley Chrysler Tech

and compression your gonna need a scan tool to verify sensor inputs and out puts. I believe this vehicle went from a hard start to a no start if I remember correctly so the next step is scan tool diagnostics

you are correct. i went out and started the car after it's been sitting and it started right off. it just doesn't sound right. it almost sounds like the cat is clogged. the garage i had it at said they did a flow test on it and it was fine? the only thing he found with his scan tool was the timing seemed to be jumping around a bit when he drove it. he said all sensors tested out fine? he couldn't find the problem. I'll find another place to take it to. the motor is too noisy in the front end like not good flow and it makes the lifter noise more pronounced. still searching for answers. :-(

The distributors on those vehicles would fail internally and cause the car to run like shit. If I remember correctly the car would start fine cold but as the engine warmed up it would run worse and worse until it qiut and possibly not restart. It would cause the car to run similar to a plugged cat but I think the timing was just way retarded because it had no power at all. What I found to work for diagnosing the problem was to take a big screwdriver/prybar and put it at the base of the distributor were it meets the engine block. Next , take a hammer and give it a good hit on the end of the pry bar.If the distributor was the problem the car would cut off when you hit the pry bar. A replacement distributor fixed the problem. I ran across 8 or 10 with bad distributors and my test method worked on every one of them. Its easy enough to try it.

thanks Mike, this is the 3rd remanufactured distributor that was put into this car. i read somewhere never to use them and only use oem ones. i'm starting to believe this now. your method might be hard to do on this car because the distributor is a little hard to get at , but I'll try it. how does this work though?

Yes, the distributor is hard to reach on the 2.5 V6. I used a long prybar/screwdriver that is about 2-3 feet long. I took one of the distributors apart to see what failed but i don't remeber exactly what it was, being this was close to 20 years ago. If I remeber correctly there was a small circuit board for the distributor pick up that failed. The vibration from tapping with the hammer caused the problem to appear. You have to give it a pretty good hit with the hammer but don't hit it hard enough to break it. Once I found this method of testing worked I used it on 8-10 cars and it never failed to find a bad distibutor. If the distributor is good it will have no affect at all no matter how hard you hit it.

You mean no matter how hard you hit it as long as you don't hit it hard enough to break it? ;-)

It is very common for hall-effect sensors to fail intermittently due to heat. The crank and cam sensors on many Chryslers will do the same thing. The distributor remanufacturers very likely do not replace the electronics, only the bearings and such. I would try getting a circuit board from a wrecker first, though.

Ted

You mean no matter how hard you hit it as long as you don't hit it hard enough to break it? ;-)

It is very common for hall-effect sensors to fail intermittently due to heat. The crank and cam sensors on many Chryslers will do the same thing. The distributor remanufacturers very likely do not replace the electronics, only the bearings and such. I would try getting a circuit board from a wrecker first, though.

Ted

well mike thanks for the reply. it sure is worth a try. i had this distributor out and ohmed the coil primary and secondary and they both seemed fine. maybe it's failing under load.