I need some help/advice/answers. Its saturday night and I was on my way back home from dinner and as I pulled into my subdivision the car (93 coupe) just dies. The lights, stereo, and A/C remained on but the motor shut off. I pulled over and turned off all the peripherals and tried to start it but nothing happened. It seemed like it was about to start but just when the motor normally turns on it would just die. I tried cranking a couple more times and nothing happened. So I ended up pushing it the rest of the way home. Thankfully, I made it home and parked. What do I do?? Does anyone have any idea as to what the problem could be? What do you think should be the next steps? (Should I get it towed to a mechanic or rent a car or what??) Please help me with this. Thanks a lot. Let me know if you need any further details to help diagnose my problem.
Hrm… Your fuel gauge correct? Actually sounds like it could be (hope not) your timing belt. =( Could be your ignition coil… Distributor related would make sense too… but… if it was your distributor… i bet your car would atleast start… then maybe bog and die after a minute.
IdntGlwIglisten: Thanks for the quick reply. I hope to God its not my timing belt. I just cannot afford to get that fixed. I had the timing belt changed at around 62k. (I’m currently at 101k miles).
Well its been about 30 minutes since the car died. I went out and tried to restart it and nothing happened. It just cranked and nothing happened. I ran a search and found that most people who had ignition coil problems were able to start their cars after some time. Also another bit of information that may help some of you guys make a diagnosis: The drive back from dinner was relatively long (I hadn’t just started the car when it died. I had been driving for around 25 miles.) Thanks for the help.
My moms corolla did the samething, it died in the parking lot, it felt like it wants to start and it turned out to be the timing belt…it lost many teeths. U can always take off the timing belt cover to check to see or you can check for spark…could be many things with our cars. When was the last time you had a tune-up?
Thanks for all your replies. Does anyone know how much it would cost to get the ignitor coil or Main fuel relay repaired? I hope its not to much… Thanks again.
Originally posted by IdntGlwIglisten Hrm… Your fuel gauge correct? Actually sounds like it could be (hope not) your timing belt. =( Could be your ignition coil… Distributor related would make sense too… but… if it was your distributor… i bet your car would atleast start… then maybe bog and die after a minute.
thats true about the distributor… going through dist. problems now and exactly what IdntGlwIglisten said. … bogs than die later, but mines actually didn’t die yet… wheew…
i think its your timing belt
but hope that i’m wrong
I got the teg fixed. I just wanted to update you guys on what the problem was so that other people can benefit from it. It turned out that both the ignition coil and “distributor bearing” were faulty. I say “distributor bearing” in quotes becuase I’m not sure what this part does/is. Anyway I got a new coil and distributor housing. Thanks again for all of your help.
Originally posted by 93LS I got the teg fixed. I just wanted to update you guys on what the problem was so that other people can benefit from it. It turned out that both the ignition coil and “distributor bearing” were faulty. I say “distributor bearing” in quotes becuase I’m not sure what this part does/is. Anyway I got a new coil and distributor housing. Thanks again for all of your help.
so is the “distributor bearing and ignition coil” inside the distributor then??? i’m confused…tell me.
ok, well, my car just died because of that today… i got a whole new distributor on the way tommarow. . . but what ponders me is that my distributor cap was full of oil when i took it off… any body else have this problem?? is there a seal inside that could have been broken?
muhahahahahaha, sounds like the attack of the Bad Gasket Monster, lol. Unbolt the valve cover (when cold, as to not burn your hands), and see if your valve cover gasket is bad (cracks, snapped, etc.) If thats not it…i’ll go as far to say that there is some sort of “secondary gasket” for the distributor whose main purpose would be to keep the engine oil from creepin on over to the distributor. I’m not too keen as to whether there would be one of those or not, so…
ok, now my car is completely dead… i just put on the new distributor and there is no ignition… the car wont start… what should i do now??? help please… i’ve been trying to get help any way i can now.
stupid question, but did you replace the cap & rotor?. Chances are that “oil” in your old distributor f***ed up the cap/rotor. When my coil went inside the distr. it took down the cap… Also I would make sure that no oil got into the spark plug wires that hook up to the cap. Good luck, hope this helped, probably not.
its ur ignition module… same thing happened to my car…
it would just turn off while driving… and when u tried to turn it on… it would crank. and sometimes turn on for a split second…
you need a new ignition module and use some dielectric grease on the connections to help. hope that helps.
I know that its inside the distributor but when they replace the distributor, they dont replace the coil or module… so tahts ur problem. 99% sure.
sorry for the long wait on the update… no time on the comp anymore, but my problem was actually a really dumb one… but i got the car working again… i have a fuel cut off system on my car (not installed by me, but previous owner) so it was triggered and i couldn’t start the car… but after i realized, i reset the system and got it working again… but thanks for all your suggestions and help… you guys helped alot and now my teg is running great. thanks ya’ll
