hi guys - new member, but have been visiting the forum recently.

i have a 1997 SC2 with 1.9 DOHC. bought it 2 years ago with 160k, now has 185k and has performed great up until now.

recently in the cold weather (i'm in CT) it has been hard starting. after cranking for 2-3 minutes it would start and run perfectly, and then restart just fine so long is it didn't sit in below freezing temperatures for over 8 hours. 2 weeks ago i replaced the ECTS, ECTS connector, and installed a new fuel filter. car worked great for about a week (outside temps were warmer), but now that the cold has returned, car is now not starting at all, no matter how long i crank for.

so i did some checks. fuel pump primes up when turning on the ignition. no spark off any of the 4 wires. remove the wires from the coil packs, and no spark jumps between the terminals. i replaced the CPS a year ago for good measure, but maybe it went bad? what else should i be checking? how do i check the coils? its definetly an ignition problem. what about the PCM? and what fuses/realys i should be looking at? all the big green 30amp fuses in the fuse box under the hood are good.

what should i do? any easy/inexpenive stuff i should be checking first? i have a multimeter i could use to check resistances.

any help is appreciated. this is my daily driver and if i keep driving my truck to work the fuel prices will have me in the poor house soon!!!!

 

i would spray some starting fluid into the throttlebody and see if it attempts to start .if you dont get any response from that its a sure bet that theres no spark.

 

done that. has no impact. definetly a spark issue. where do i begin?

 

Well, I'd try this ....

On a cool day that the car starts the first time, I'd spray the CPS with a can of freeze spray (available at RadioShack or equal), and get the CPS unit as cold as I could - then try to start again. It might show up a temperature sensitive module. Of course, you could just replace the CPS first, and see if that fixes your problem .....

 

i don't think its gonna start up for me again. it always started in the past after 2-3 minutes of cranking, but i've tried it on several occasions over the past couple of days (without completely draining the battery) and its not starting.

when i get it home in my garage, i'll heat the garage up with my space heater and try to start it. i doubt it will, i think its just a coincidence now that it got cold and won't start.

do you know what kind of resistence i should see on the cps? i can put my multimeter on it. any test i could do on the coil packs? relays i should check? test on the pcm?

thanks for your reply.

 

You should be getting about 800 ohms across the CPS terminals.

 

cps was good. was a bad icm. $20 for the icm and both coils at the junkyard and i'm up and running.