Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Not starting, spark and fuel

hey guys, I am a new one here so bare with me

I just picked up a very nice 58,000 mile 96 with the duratec in it.

Well, she will crank and crank, but not start.Battery is low, but I had a jump box as well as charged it up and jumped it off of a running car with jumper cables.

I verified spark, and fuel (not pressure) , as well as tried with starting fluid.

I guess my questions are ;

I have heard about how important a good battery is on these cars. Will it really not start even though you have enough juice to crank it for a long time, over and over?

I am not sure if it has PATS. I know the key that came with the car does not have a chip. Is there any way to verify if it does or not?

If it does have PATS, will it still allow it to crank , but not start? Or does the starter stay dead also with PATS?



I will know more tommarrow as I only had about half an hour with it today.

I can't say for 100% sure, but all the PATS systems i've seen will not allow the car to crank over. The PATS light will just flash rapidly. You say you have spark and fuel. What do the plugs look like after you crank it for a while? Pull a plug and see if the look flooded or anything. Maybe try holding the throttle open about a 1/4 of the way in case your IAC is stuck it will not get air and will not start. The last thing would be to check compression. If you've got spark and fuel and hold the throttle open to verify you're getting air, then compression (timing, head gasket etc...) would be the last thing.

PATS was not used until 98 so it is not a PATS problem.

An ocassional problem with the Duratec is a flooded engine. Too much fuel causing the plugs to be wet and not fire. If this is the problem you can usually get it to light by cranking with the throttle held to the floor. Holding the throttle to the floor shuts off the injectors and after a minute or so of cranking the engine will usually light off.

In an extreme case of flooding, the engine may crank very rapidly from loss of compression due to the excess fuel washing out the rings and cylinder walls. Often you can still get the engine to light by holding the throttle wide open as above. In an extreme case, it may help to pull the front spark plugs and squirt about a tablespoon of engine oil into each cylinder and reinstall the plugs and try again. The oil will bring the compression back. If you don't think the engine is cranking extremely fast, don't add oil to the cylinders. It won't help, and may complicate things. The engine will run rough until all 6 cylinders have regained compression and the engine will smoke heavily out the exhaust for several minutes until the oil is burned out.

If this isn't your problem or if it doesn't help, you will probably need to get a shop involved.

Anyone else have any ideas?

Thanks guy.

BigJim, you confirmed one thing I was thinking. That was if it was flooded.

One of the things I found was that the spark plug boots did not seem snapped on all the way on the of the cylinders. This made me start on the path of thinking the 3 plugs got fouled from poor spark. But that did not explain why the other 3 did not fire at all.Not even a sputter.

I fear that it might be a head gasket also after skimming through the archives. The car has 58,000 on it and I saw signs of coolant on the outside of the radiator making me think it has overheated. Seeing the stuff about the waterpump impellers breaking makes me think this is the case.

Playing with turbo cars for the last 8-9 years, I know all about headgaskets and I would think it should still at least have a sputter of life even if one whole bank of cylinders had the gasket blow between all of them.

I think tommarrow I will verify fuel pressure. Then either max charge the battery or buy a new one. Also might throw some plugs and wires at it. At that mileage I wouldnt think it would need them, but the front left one's boot (#?) was pretty rotted and came apart very easy.

If all else fails, I will throw another motor in there. I do have a line on a cheap SVT motor , but I might have missed it , so a stock replacment would have to do.

I was hoping it would be easier to run the codes like my earlier cars

did the car ever start up, or did you get it and never saw it run????? if so check to see if there is a kill switch in the car(you know some type of toggle switch that is put on so no one will steal the car when you park it).. i had a friend who put a kill switch on a company car... well he was on vacation and his partner tried to use the car and did no know about the switch... he put it in the company shop and they replace the distributor, and alot of other things and still could not get the car to run.. he came back from vacation and found out his car was in the shop...
he went to shop and checked on the car.. they told him that they would have to send it out to the dealer as they cannot find out what is wrong with it... he then went to his car and turned the kill switch off and started it right up....
the mechanics then chased him out of the shop.....

GT350R, my 4cyl Contour would not start and it turned out to be a bad timing belt....it would not even sputter.
I was expecting it to be a bad fuel pump or the computer because the plugs were sparking just fine, in the good ole days a bad timing belt meant no spark.

May or may not apply to your 6cyl engine but worth a look.
It also would not hurt to double check the impact safety shutoff switch for the fuel pump, the switch is located in the trunk right next to the trunk door latch.

Jerrit

Well, it turned out to be a headgasket.

Now trhe dilema is to replace just the headgasket ,

or........

drop in the SVT contour motor (I have an extra motor)


or.............

sell the car and the SVT motor as a package cheap and be done with it and stick to my Turbo Mustangs

Head gasket failure on these cars is very rare. You may wish to check it out again before tearing down the engine.