Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting V6 Contour won't start!

I hope to all that is holy that someone here can help me on this one: I have the factory service manual and Chilton's manual and a few years automotive tinkering experience. I have a 97 Contour V6 with 5-speed manual, and I recently (June) bought another car, so I put the Contour "up" in the garage, and it didn't have hardly any fuel in it. Went to start it a few weeks later and it wouldn't start... I started trouble-shooting:

Put more fuel in it: that didn't help.
Replaced spark plugs and spark plug wires.
Checked resistance between coil towers and pins
Bought a spark tester and verified spark on at least three cylinders
Cleaned almost all sensors (other than camshaft and crankshaft pos. sensors and ECT sensor) with electronic cleaner...sprayed off a lot of connectors and things with that.

I started taking apart my intake and said what the hell, I've had upper/lower manifold gaskets sitting around for a while...maybe I'll just go ahead and rebuild the intake...
Discovered in this process the EGR passages caked in HEAVY carbon deposits... dipped/soaked both upper and lower manifolds in chem-dip for a few days and sprayed off...as well as picking out EGR passages with wire brush... nice and clean now.

� Replaced IAC valve and EGR valve and gaskets along with this project... put in new gaskets and when putting everything back together I did the "Throttle Body optimization" as described in the How-To's. I don't know if I reassembled the throttle springs correctly, as it's much less...erm...springy than before...not as much tension as there should be I think... but I don't think that would cause a no-start.

While I was down there I also replaced the upstream bank 1 O2 sensor that I had been meaning to do for a while... that makes four fairly new O2 sensors.

In the process of troubleshooting all this the battery discharged beyond its ability to crank the engine, so I had to recharge it. Put it back in the car as well as putting in a new air filter, and after ALL of that work, it still won't start. I checked almost all fuses with a voltage tester... not sure how to check relays. But I can hear the fuel pump priming and I have pressure at the fuel rail.

I had to take everything back apart twice because I forgot to put in a component, so I am 100% sure everything is in its correct spot at the correct torque (bought a torque wrench that does inch-lbs just for this project).

I hope someone can help me with this...sorry for the novel. I'm going to ask my automotive engine teacher at my community college for help as well, but maybe someone here has insight into this... in the back of my mind I'm thinking crankshaft position sensor, because I've heard other people talking about this as a no-start culprit, but I don't know how to check to see if it's bad, and I've spent enough money on this project already. Thanks a lot.

How does the engine crank? Does it crank very rapidly, much more than normal? If so, you may have lost compression from washing the rings out from the engine flooding.

If this is what happened, you can often get it started by holding the throttle wide open (which shuts off the injecotrs) while you crank. In extreme cases, it helps to pull the three front plugs and squirt a little oil in each cylinder to build compression, put the plugs back in and then try cranking again with the throttle wide open at first then back off a little after some of the oil has cleared.

It should be obvious that the engine is cranking too fast. If in doubt, it is probably something else.

It could also be stale gas. If it is, you may not get it started without squirting some gas or ether into the throttle body.

I had a problem with a pin in one of the wiring connectors that drifted out and shut off the injectors. It was one of the wiring connectors on the right side of the engine. The connector was defective and did not hold the pin properly. I don't think this is a common issue though.

There is always a slight posibility that either the crank or cam position sensors have failed, but this is probably very remote.

Good luck.

check for spark at plugs? do a compression test?

are you getting any fuel?
a friend of mine had that problem a few years back with his SHO. he put it up for teh winter and it didnt want to start after about a month (he was going to start it every month and let it run for 15 minutes) needless to say we replaced damn near everyy ignition and starting component to no avail... turned out something thru his inertia switch which shut off his fuel pump. i am notsaying this is yoru problem, and it may have been just a fluke with his car, but who knows i thought i had seen it all untill that day...

other than that have you checked your main fuse?

Do you have a chip? If so, pull it & see if the car starts then.

Got PATS?? Turn the key to 'ON' without starting & see if any irratic blinking indicates a PATS problem.

Other than that, my best suggestion is to pull the injectors & clean them.

On deals like this, check your wiring in the engine comparment. is the insulation brittle and fallen off? Are there bare wires? Check the wires going into the pcm on the passenger side firewall. Any bare, any touching, do a wiggle test while haveing sometry to start the car.....

Spray some starting fluid in the throttle body. Does the engine fire up for a sec.....if not, then you electrical problems of some type..

Have you changed your fuel filter under the car?

Bob

The engine does seem to crank a little faster than normal... but I'm not sure if it's really faster. I'm almost certain the gas is okay, since I put more fuel in it and the gas that I put in I bought the day before, and the gas that is already in it has a bottle or two of HEET in it...

I have tried starting the car with the throttle held open, though I may not have the throttle all the way open. After rebuilding the throttle and putting the springs back on the pedal seems easier to push down...and not a good easier...it seems not to have as much tension as before...but that's a separate issue entirely...wondering if someone has a picture as to how to the springs should be engaged?

As for the starting issue...

I have replaced the fuel filter; I forgot to mention it in my first post. The fuel injectors damn well better be clean, as clean as I can get them without actually running them through an official injector cleaning machine...I sprayed them all off with carb spray and electronics cleaner, and the fuel rail to manifold seals are all new.

Is it really possible to "wash out" the rings, as you say? I have heard of flooding the engine, but it seems like after sitting like that and having been taken apart and put back together the fuel would've dissipated, and I made sure to prime the fuel system several times before cranking, and made sure there was 40 psi of pressure at the fuel rail.

I'm not sure how to check if my injectors are actually firing, as it doesn't seem like (I know for a fact that) our injector connectors are accessible without removing the upper intake manifold, in which case I wouldn't want to crank the engine while having that off and a noid light on.

My automotive teacher told me to check the crank sensor with a vtmeter to see if there is an AC voltage reading when cranking, and that to check the injectors I will probably need a scan tool.

The wiring in the engine compartment looks a little brittle in a couple places, a couple places where there is insulation cracking a bit, and a spot off of my battery cable where there are bare wires exposed...but I'm fairly certain there is no short and nothing touching that I can see that isn't supposed to be touching.

How can I check the main fuse?

As for other questions: I have verified spark in at least three cylinders. The spark plugs are new. The plug wires are new. The coil is firing (as I have spark). The battery is good. The starter cranks. The intake is clean and all gaskets are new. EGR and IAC valves are new. Fuel filter is new.

Sorry again for the long post, but I wanted to respond to all the posts at once. Thanks a lot for the responses and hopefully someone has some answers to my additional questions.

Oh, and no, I don't think it's a PATS issue, whatever that is...there is nothing flashing on the dashboard, other than the standard lights that light up when the key is turned to 'ON'.

I don't have a chip.

I have not done a compression test.

If it is a fuel problem, you should be able to get the engine to run briefly by spraying starting ether or gasoline into the throttle body.

I'm not sure if I read it correctly but it looks like you said that you could use a noid light to see if the injector was firing.

If you flooded out the rings, the rapid cranking should be very obvious. If it is cranking evenly, you don't need to take a compression reading on all cylinders, just one for reference, so choose the easiest one to reach. If the compression is way off, you can restore it by squirting about a teaspoon to a tablespoon of oil (I usually use ATF) in the front three cylinders. That will restore half of the engine and the other three will restore shortly after the engine starts on the front three.

Your car (97) doesn't have PATS so that won't be your problem. PATS is passive anti theft which is the systme with a transponder chip in the key that the car must recognize or the engine will not start.

I'll get some starting fluid so I can rule out a fuel issue, thanks.

And no, I said that I can't really use a noid light because the way the injectors are (under the upper intake manifold) I can't get to the connectors without taking off the entire upper intake, and if I do that I'm not going to try to crank the engine. So I'm guessing I would have to use a scan tool to check the injector pulses.

To do a compression check don't I have to take out all of the spark plugs before threading in the tester into one of the holes? Or do I just disconnect the coil so that the spark plugs can't fire while I'm doing the test?

I could look this up in the manual I assume, but what should the compression be ideally and what is a minimum pressure I should look for? Thanks a lot again.