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Battery not connected correctly. A terminal wire fell off?
Something grounding and therefore no juice to anything?
Never the less, you got a serious electrical problem. Start watching Eric’s videos on electrical problems.
I hope I didn’t sound snarky – and I apologize if I did – but you have some diagnosing to do. Get your multimeter out and expect some long tedious testing.
And if you have access to the wiring diagrams for you car, learn those.
Good Luck!
Hopefully, it’ll be something simple – like the red or black terminal wire fell off the battery.
That lugnut looks pretty standard. That being said, yeah – $5-$6 a piece is about right.
I did the Advanceauto, Autozone, NAPA, O’Reilly tour on those and that’s about what I see. (I was curious myself – you never know when you need something.)
Sometimes, you gotta suck it up. However, I’m hoping someone will post something that proves me wrong.
This will be the last internal combustion engine car I’ll ever have – hopefully.
Overly complicated 19th century crap.
FYI, I checked the OBDII socket under the dash.
Getting 12v on pin 16.
very low voltage on pins 4&5&7 Pin #7 should have 3.5volts.
Resistance: low on 4&5 and nothing registering on pin 7 – the K-line.
To recap:
I did this because my CEL doesn’t come on (bulb OK) and car cranks but doesn’t start.
While driving my car just out of the blue it stopped running – like if it stalled.
If this is reproducible, meaning your engine isn’t dead now – you start it up every time and it dies after 3 seconds, I’d say it’s fuel or spark.
3 seconds is about the amount of fuel in the rails and lines.
So, my wild guess is that the fuel pump is cutting out.
This was “Stay Dirty” project car and main mode of transportation. I did alternators, valve cover gaskets, head gasket, alternator, clutch, brakes, fluid changes, hoses, belts, EGR, vacuum line repairs, gaskets, oil sending unit, electrical, catalytic converter, plugs, wires, coil testing, and there’s more.
And then there’s the work I mentioned above that’ll have to be done. I don’t mind doing the work; it’s the money. And I don’t want to flush money down the drain. This isn’t a ’65 Chevy Corvette but a ’95 Chevy Cavalier.
And it’s worth only a couple of hundred when it’s drivable. And if I spend a grand or more and I get hit, the insurance company is gonna total it no matter how little damage and give me a couple of hundred bucks. Good-bye transmission work and money!
From what I’ve seen around, 200,000 miles is pretty much the top end of most cars for their life.
I donated it yesterday and it’s going to be picked up in the next couple of days.[quote=”Summer_Night” post=156962]
You couldn’t find a trans at a junkyard?
[/quote]Actually, no. And neither on eBay – plenty of automatics, though. When I pulled the configuration of my car from a website that I can’t remember to save my life right now, GM didn’t make many cars like mine.
The engine is pretty worn out too. Backing up means going through a cloud of blue smoke and I have to add about a quart of oil every 3,000 miles or so. It barely passes emissions. The tester worked with me and ran the tests at lower gears. I’d have four more years before I’m exempt.
So, I’m expecting I’d have to do an engine rebuild within a year.
Then do a lot of interior repairs.
And as the car gets older, parts are becoming harder to get.
It needs new tires, too.
And I’d be working on the thing in the dead of winter – outside.
I got real lucky that it died in my driveway and not 35 miles away at the airport where I was the day before. That’s the other thing, I don’t mind fixing the cars and getting in deep into a transmission or engine, but getting stuck – even with the free roadside assistance from my insurance company – is pretty stressful.
All said and done, I’m thinking I’d shell out $3,000 or so to get the car drivable again. $250/month for a year – not quite a car payment, but ….
Dry test reads 60 30 60 90 psi.
That’s a big variance between those and it’s very low. I think that’s where your problem is. Shouldn’t they be more like 139psi or something? What does the manual say for what the compression numbers should be?
[quote=”NATHANSB” post=156661]A little more info about the car.
It is a EX model with a manual transmission. It has 240K.
Also I forgot to mention that the engine oil was really low to my surprise. It’s blow the lower dot and barely made it on the dipstick. I have just changed the oil in October. There is no substantial oil leaks to be seen. The coolant was also a little low.
While the car was parked, it rained pretty hard for a couples of days. But I really doubt it has anything to do with the weather.[/quote]Did the car blow a lot of smoke when it did run?
Eric has a big section on diagnosing this issue
http://www.ericthecarguy.com/no-start-faq/solving-automotive-no-start-problemsand I’d go through that. He does list a “mechanical integrity” on his list and the symptoms of low oil and coolant lower has me thinking that you may have that issue.
Off of the top of my head:
1. Check the transmission fluid level. Look in your user manual or get a Haynes manual at your local auto store to see how to do that. Add if you have to.
2. As your car warms up, does the idle get better? Your car may be long over due for a tune up.
3. Go under and check the filters in the transmission. You may have a clogged filter but since you didn’t mention shifting problems after the warm up, it may not be that but it couldn’t hurt to do it anyway.
Good luck!
Make sure there’s enough oil in the crankcase. Yes, I know it was just serviced, but check anyway.
Check oil pressure.
If it’s OK, then tackle sending unit. Check connection – broken wires, clean the contacts, etc …
If all that fails, then yeah, I’d be replacing the pump.