Hey,
Im new to the forum as I am also new to owning a saturn. I was given the car because my brother bought a new one and all my cars get crap gas mileage. Anyway,. I have an issue seemingly with the injectors. It seems to only be running on cylinders 3 and 4. I had the ecm reprogrammed, reflashed and then replaced with a a reman one. It didn''t change the symtom. I was wondering if anyone had ever heard of anything like this?

The car has good compression in all cylinders 160 plus.

Im not sure it how or where to go from here. I had some mechanic friends of mine look at it and the reason we replaced/reflashed the comp. in because injector pulse from cylinder 1 and 2 seemed to be not occuring.

Any ideas or insights would be greatly appreciated.

have you checked for spark on those cylinders

absolutely did check spark. When I pop the boot upward on 1 and 2 I can hear the spark jumping the gap. When I pull it on 3 or 4 the car wants to die.

Not sure where to go from here. looked at the wiring and no chafing to speak of. . . grounds look good.

Coil pack and sensor are also swapped with a friends extra one.

Fuel injectors are new. Fuel psi is normal.

thanks for your reply.

Check the gap on cylinders 1 & 2. Possible fouled/shorted plug(s). Pulling ANY plug wire should cause stumble/miss. If no change, obviously that cylinder is not helping out. Possible injector problem, but unusual to lose two at the same time ....

^^well if its 2 at the same time that i would assume then its 1 of the coil packs

Ok so heres how messed up it gets.

So I pulled the plugs and they were fouled and actually wet. Which means fuel is being added. However, when I pull the boot out of the cylinder while its running. 1 and 2 do not make a difference. So its running on 3 and 4.

Heres how messed up it is. I switched wires for 1 and 2 just to see what would happen and it didn''t run any different. So im trying to figure out what that means.

I mean seriously, i am at my limits for tonight.

Thanks

im trying to figure out exactly what you are saying. Let me get this straight

- You are not getting spark on 1 and 2.
- you are not getting spark on 3 and 4

Here is what you do because it seems you may not be checking these correctly

remove 1 spark plug wire and make the metal connect to a bare metal and see if you get any spark from the wire. Do this one at a time for each wire to make sure that you are actually getting spark to each wire.

it may even be bad wires but they would have to be pretty bad. But start by doing this and let us know because im not sure exactly how it is with your car but with most cars there are 2 coil packs. where 2 wires go to each pack. So if you have 2 consecutive wires not getting anything i would point to one of the coil packs

Ok i fixed the issue. Looks like whoever did the tune up on this car before I got it was the cause of the problem. Most likely my brother. Firing order was wrong.

I was saying I was not getting a result from pulling plug wires 1 and 2. No change in car but it was sparking like mad. I would get a result from pulling plug 3 or 4. The engine would die. Since the firing order was wrong it was acting weird. Getting fuel, getting spark, and had compression. Anyway thanks for your time.

BlueSC2 -


Glad you were able to fix the problem. Its a lesson for all of us, sometimes the little things will bite you in the butt. Enjoy your ride ...

ooo ok i see now. Glad you got it resolved

Yeah i believe the computer still needed to be replaced which is why he tried to do a tune up. Then when the tune up didn''t fix it he decided to let it sit and then got a new car. Then I came in to the picture and found no injector pulse and no fuel in cylinders 1 and 2. Replaced the computer and then i was fouling plugs 1 and 2. Firing order was something I didn''t look at until last night because i assumed he couldn''t have screwed up a 4 cyl firing order. but he did and I got a great running car for 155.00 (price of the reman. computer through my hook up at napa)
Just had to spend a little brain power to make it run right and figure it out.

I''ll def be keeping up with this site. The car runs great but I am sure there will be issues in the future. Older cars there always are.

Thanks
Mike J

wow good deal. That beats my price. I was able to get my sl2 for $500 and all ive replaced is the water pump in 2 years. How many miles are on the car?