My brother pulled up to a red light and it just died. He said that he didn't even know that was dead until he went to take off and it went nowere. He turned turned the engine off and tried to start it and nothing. I checked the fuel pump and it is working. I changed the spark plugs and wires. And i cleaned the battery terminals and posts. Then checked the fuses. Then checked to see what condition the distributer and roter were in and they look good. It acts like it want's to start but it won't. PLEASE HELP ASAP
I changed the distributer. and still the same thing happens. How should i check the spark. And the fuel. It is fuel injection. thank you for all the help you can give.
I am not sure what the TFI module is. Maybe somebody can tell me what it is. I was thinking that maybe it's getting fuel but not enough. Iwas going to see if i could check if there was gas getting into the engine. But i don't know how. The fuel injecters go strait into the engine at least thats what it looks like. And the headers run over the top of them. All of this is helpful please keep wrighting.
Usually bolted to the distributor housing, but some vehicles had it bolted to the radiator support. It?s held on with a couple of Torx screws, and thermally conductive heat sink grease must be used for installing a new one. This is a problem so common on FoMoCo vehicles from the late '80s to early '90s that there was a recall (free factory fix at dealer). If yours has less than 100K miles, it may STILL be a FREE fix.
I will check that anyone else with a suggestion please help. I need my car fixed fast. I still need to know if i can check the fuel injecters and how. I don't want to cause a fire or blow somthing up or myself. Joe
If you don't want to sit here giving us one clue at a time and wait for a response, I have one very important suggestion that you can ignore at your own peril:
Go to an Auto Parts store like NAPA, Pep Boys or Kragen/Schucks, and buy an aftermarket repair manual that covers your make and model car.
Then sit down and read it. It's the best $20 you'll ever spend.
The book will have complete troubleshooting trees to isolate the problem fast. And more important, it will tell you what NOT to do - there are some things people will tell you anonymously to do in a newsgroup (*) that can damage or destroy the car, like "test the alternator by disconnecting the battery with the engine running."
(* - Then they laugh with their friends that they got "some dork" to blow up their car. You don't want to be that dork.)
Disconnecting the battery with the engine running can be Very Bad. Without the battery as a current sink, the alternator on some cars (depends on the alternator design) will go full-field and put out 80+ Volts instead of the normal 14 - 15V you need, and it will fry everything. And I do mean everything. The diagnosis "Uneconomical To Repair" will be spoken.
Okay, now that I have your complete attention... ;-)
You need proper cranking speed, enough compression, a fairly close mix of fuel and air, and a spark at the right time, or the engine will not run. Figure out what you DON'T have, and you have made progress.
You might have to buy or rent a few tools, but after you exhaust the other easy steps first. Like making sure the Rollover Switch didn't trigger from an impact, cutting off the fuel pump and causing the car to die at the traffic light - something big and loose in the vicinity of the switch can cause it to false trigger. Ford likes installing these switches.
Fuel pressure, they sell a gauge with a special adapter that plugs into a test port under the hood. Follow the instructions, and you won't spray fuel around. Fuel pumps and fuel pressure regulators both fail.
Fuel injectors, they have little test lamps that plug into the harness, to see if the power pulses are going to the injectors. And if you smell gas at the exhaust pipe after trying to crank it, some fuel is getting through.
Might try some Starting Fluid and/or the old Unlit Propane Torch In The Intake trick to provide an external fuel source, see if it tries to start. If it tries and dies, it's probably fuel related.
Spark, you want to use a 'false spark plug' gap-type tester - having the plug wire totally open while cranking is not good on the coil and wires, the voltage spikes way too high and it will try to find another path to ground. If the path it finds goes through anything electronic, it's fried.
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