'93 K8 Not Restarting

rccardude04 · Post by **rccardude04** » October 22nd, 2006, 9:41 am

So last night, after a 30 minute drive at 65mph on the highway, we stopped to get gas. Filled up at a trusted station, restarted the car. Went to drive off and I THOUGHT I killed it because I had a little more payload than normal, but when I went to restart the beast, all I got was the engine turning over at the speed it normally does and seemingly no spark or fuel. We let the thing sit for half an hour, still nothing. Towed it back to my house, still nothing. It won't restart.
We looked at all fuses, they're fine. The fuel pump comes on so it should be getting fuel. The plugs were replaced fairly recently, just a few months ago.
Extra info: The car doesn't really idle properly sometimes. It'll sometimes idle like normal, but other times it'll creep up to about 1500rpm and then drop to the normal 750ish and creep up again and repeat.
The other day, I thought I felt it miss while pulling into a parking lot but didn't really think much of it.
I think I know what it is and what I should do, but I want to make sure there's nothing retarded that I or my friend may have overlooked.
Thanks in advance,
-Eric

max kl · Post by **max kl** » October 22nd, 2006, 10:21 am

all I got was the engine turning over at the speed it normally does and seemingly no spark or fuel.
We looked at all fuses, they're fine. The fuel pump comes on so it should be getting fuel.
ok have you tected for spark & injector pulse?
fuel pressure is harder to accuratly test for
but an easy way is to
loosen the 17mm fuel inlet nut .
tighten back up crank car for 1 sec
loosen again did fuel sprak both times? if so you got workable fuel pressure
if not then test with a gauge.

fuel pump will make noise and not pump a thing.

rccardude04 · Post by **rccardude04** » October 22nd, 2006, 2:40 pm

We didn't get to check for spark last night, but we will today. I'll also check the fuel pressure like you said if the ignition seems to be working.
I do have a strange feeling I'll be trying out the HEI mod sometime today though. I refuse to buy another distributor if the piece of crap is just going to blow up in a weeks, months, whatever.
-Eric

max kl · Post by **max kl** » October 23rd, 2006, 8:05 pm

any news?

rccardude04 · Post by **rccardude04** » October 23rd, 2006, 10:31 pm

Like I initially suspected, it was the distributor. I went ahead and just put an autozone reman one on it and I'm going to hope it works. However, I do think that I'm going to gather the parts for the HEI mod and external coil as well as modifying the cap so that if it happens again, I will be ready even if I'm on the side of the road.
Also ... should I have been getting any engine trouble codes? We tried to pull the CEL codes on it, but it wasn't giving any.
-Eric

max kl · Post by **max kl** » October 23rd, 2006, 10:43 pm

no not always if the seconary side fails the ecm wont set a code or even no wats up.
but it the primary side fails like the crank sensor than yes codes will be set.