After a number of hours searching the forums I decided there was nothing left to do other than post.
I am working with a friend of mine trying to figure out what is wrong with his Rover. he owns a 1990 Range Rover Classic with the 3.9L V8...
We have a plethora of odd things going on, but we seem to be doing nothing but making it worse as we fix things.
It started with Random starts in the morning. if the vehicle started once, he was good all day and had no worries. (This causes a bit of an inconvienence because we are both in the military and they don't like it when your late) So we did some basic troubleshooting, spark at coil, spark at plugs, fuel, filters, electrical, everything appeared to check out fine from the basics. We did some reading online and found some articles in regards to a Fire Trap, and the lines around it. So we replaced the vacuum lines and cleaned the fire trap, thinking this might be the fix, because we found that one of the hoses was broken and the others were VERY clogged. This is a problem we are only able to test once a day (First start then it's fine). Next afternoon, no start. cleaned the idle air bypass "thing"; we checked the spark plugs and those are well within tolerance in regards to gap and otherwise.
alrighty. now that we've done this work and we have been VERY careful not to disturb any other mechanical or electrical component, but alas, new issue. Now we're not getting spark to the plugs. we are ordering a new cap and rotor, but wondering if there is anything else we can look for in the distributor that might be the culprit. Read something online about an ign amp, I personally haven't poked my head into it and am far from a mechanic, but I have a general understanding of autos and engines and have worked on a number of them in the past. does this vehicle have points or a condenser or anything that needs to be gapped? could vacuum advance have anything to do with this? the vacuum hoses are all good and when the veh is running it runs flawlessly. I am posting this because we are stumped and throwing money at a problem sucks if we don't have the knowledge to point us in the right direction. I wouldn't mind replacing more items that are relativly inexpensive, but I'm trying to troubleshoot it down a little more than what I've got going for me.
He also replaced a coolant temp sensor, he read that those may cause an issue with too much fuel and flooding.
But all in all, at this point we have no spark at the plugs now. still have plenty of voltage at the coil. Thus engine doesn't start.
If anyone has a magic wand they could wave over their computer and just make the problems go away that'd be great. otherwise any suggestions on troubleshooting techniques or steps that we can do, or parts that anyone would recommend would be a great help.
Thank you,
Bradley
Random Starts -> No Starts
Linear Mode
