97 Ford Escort cranks but wont start.

Tiny
DOOGINS
  • MEMBER
  • 1997 FORD ESCORT
  • 4 CYL
  • FWD
  • AUTOMATIC
I'm trying to troubleshoot my parents 97 ford escort, it's a 2.0. At first every now and then it would bog when you started it up but would be fine while driving. Sometimes it would start up and idle fine. Seemed to be an intermitent problem while idle. Then about 2 weeks ago it had a loss of power when accelerating and as of 3 days ago it started bogging down while driving it till finaly 2 days ago it won't even start but it will crank. If you give it gas while cranking it sputters a bit but won't start. I depressurised the fuel line and turned it back to the on position on the ignition and it repressurized so I'm pretty sure it's not the fuel filter or pump. I checked all the injectors and they all read 13.6 ohms. I also tried to check the trigger or pulse to the injectors and when I turned the ignition to on I got 12 volts to the injectors but when I went to crank it over it went down to 10.6 volts and stayed there. I'm not sure if I did the pulse check right or not. I'm using a multimeter for those checks. The coil pack checks out and the plugs all fire. I hooked up my odbII scanner since the check engine light was on but I didn't get any codes reported back. The only thing I can think of is maybe a bad PCM or is it possible the timming belt broke? The timming belt was never replaced and it has 197, 00 miles on it so I think that could be a possibility. What are some things I could do to troubleshoot this further?
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 AT 4:17 AM

3 Replies

Tiny
BMRFIXIT
  • MECHANIC
  • 19,053 POSTS
Check timing belt
injector pulse is to check if you have power at the injectors with key on and PCM grounding the injectors as engine cranking
so if you unplug the injector and plug a light bulb, crank engine the bulb should pulse on off
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Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 AT 12:40 PM
Tiny
DOOGINS
  • MEMBER
  • 2 POSTS
Thank you BMRFIXIT, The timing belt was loose and had about 14 teeth missing. I replaced the seals and water pump and timing belt but my problem now is it tells me to do 2 full revelutions on the crankshaft pulley when I have eveything lined up but I can't do 2 full revolutions on it no matter what even with the timing belt of and the spark plugs out. I can turn it about 1 and 7/8 revolutioons out of it either way but no more yet when I crank it over while trying to start everything sounds good and I could crank all day long but it won't start. I would like to see if I'm off a tooth or two but I can't check it because I can't manually do 2 full revolutions. Really scratching my head on this one.
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Friday, December 10th, 2010 AT 5:54 AM
Tiny
BMRFIXIT
  • MECHANIC
  • 19,053 POSTS
Set timing belt and than do a compression test
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Friday, December 10th, 2010 AT 10:48 PM

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