my girlfriend's car wouldn't start this morning. sounds like its tryin real hard to, but just won't turn over. pulled a plug and didn't see a spark; plug didn't look fouled. pulled the distributor cap and the contacts looked a little oxidized, went to advance and put a new dist cap and rotor button on. still won't fire.

what direction should i go from here? the service shop at the toyota dealership suggested the ignition condenser, then the ignition coil, and finally the distributor (biggest $ item) as the path to follow, with the condenser being the cheapest.. she's got AAA so i can get it towed somewhere if need be for diagnostics, but i'd like to avoid it if possible. thanks.

oh and it ran perfectly as of last night, so whatever happened it just up and died overnight.

[Edited on February 26, 2007 at 12:42 PM. Reason : 1.6L engine]

2/26/2007 12:42:13 PM

Quote :

"but just won't turn over"

??? do you mean it wont start?

2/26/2007 12:46:29 PM

yes

2/26/2007 12:48:23 PM

Happy Jap's. In Cary. 467-2884. Talk to Rex. Tell him Superfly sent you. And let him do his thing. He's good at diagnostics (one of the better ones I've met), and you'd be wasting his time and yours trying to jump the gun and tell him what to do on diagnostics.

As far as diagnostics go, yer gonna have to backprobe the ignitor module and the coil with either a low-current LED-style test light or an oscilloscope to do waveform testing. The first thing you should check, however, is that the ignition coil has the correct resistance across the primary terminals and from the secondary terminal (the high-voltage output) to the negative primary terminal.

Good chance you'll need to check waveform on the crank angle sensor located in the distributor. I can't remember if '94 or '95 was the first year for the crank angle sensor located on the front crankshaft snout, but if it has one of them, then you'd need to check waveform on that as well.

Bottom line is, this isn't an unheard-of failure, and you'd probably be best off getting a real shop or mechanic pinpoint the issue. You'll blow a LOT of time trying yourself, and if you don't have the right tools, you can't really do it anyway. The most you could do would be to throw parts at it and hope the problem goes away.

2/26/2007 12:49:55 PM

thanks, i just talked to him and he seemed to think it'd a be a quick diagnosis. i think we'll be gettin it towed down there tomorrow. i certainly don't think I could diagnose it here, just wonderin of anyone knew if the coil/condenser/distributor failed often on these cars.

[Edited on February 26, 2007 at 12:56 PM. Reason : asdf]

2/26/2007 12:54:01 PM