01 Stratus..starts than dies..than wont start.

[Perkul8r]

Ok..I know this aint a mitsu..but it has a mitsu motor. lol.

01 Dodge Stratus coupe..Mitsu 3.0 V6. around 168,000 miles.

The problem with the car is..It will start, run poorly, than just die. After that it will not restart. It attempts to but just will not fire off.

The owner says he changed plugs, wires, cap and rotor. And they do look fairly new. The only thing I have done to the car was change the timing belt..it was horrid. And I replaced the fuel pump.

So far I have checked for both spark and power to the fuel pump. When the car runs there is 13.6 volts at the fuel pump. The power never goes down until the car dies. Than while cranking it will have 10.5 to 11 volts.

The car does have spark during the no start situation. And it will attempt to fire but just wont take off..Kinda acts like its out of fuel. But its not. And the injectors are firing.

I am kinda at a loss on this one. I have been racking my brain on what it could be. So any help would be greatly appreciated.

Oh..Obviously..car is comparable to the 3g eclipse with the v6 and an auto.

[EclipseGST]

What is the fuel pressure like at the rail?

You dont happen to have a scope for a scan tool to where you can watch injector pulse and spark overlay to see if the timing is off?

I had a customers car come in that wouldnt start, it would pop and sputter but not start, ended up finding out the dowel pin that goes into the cam gear broke and the cam twisted 20*. Somehow did not bend any valves. Only way I found this was with a scope to watch the crank trigger and cam trigger and see they were a ways off.

How is the fuel filter. Best thing you could do is check timing first, then test fuel pressure. Get a number, just because it has fuel at the rail does not mean it has the correct fuel pressure for the injectors to fire. If you have good pressure, then test fuel flow while cranking. Little button on the side of the fuel pressure tester, put the hose in a bottle and watch the pressure when you press the button to see how far it drops. Then let the fuel sit in the contain for a little bit and see if it separates. Indication of water. Also have seen that happen.

Good luck.

[Perkul8r]

I dont have the correct special tool to check pressure at the rail. I am looking at ordering one.

I might be able to borrow the scan tool from work to check the other stuff. I will try that tomorrow.

Timing is good..I just replaced the timing belt and had it running the day after and checked it with a timing light.

these cars dont have a replacable fuel filter. Only one is the sock filter on the tank.

[Perkul8r]

I did order the correct parts to test fuel pressure at the rail today...should have them sometime tomorrow. Than I will post the results.

[1QUICK4]

Timing is good..I just replaced the timing belt and had it running the day after and checked it with a timing light.
.

You do know that a timing belt has nothing to do with the ignition timing?

Is there a check engine light? are all your sensors reading correctly? (ECT/CKP/etc.)

[Perkul8r]

No check engine light. Scanned with our scanner from the shop and everything looked ok. I didn't personally do that part. One of the mechanics did.

I did check the fuel pressure tonight. for the whole whopping maybe 1 minute that the car ran i had about 50 psi with vacuum connected. Which is close to what the book i have says it should have..

however..after it died it would only get up to about 20 psi of pressure. After sitting for a little bit, it would build close to 50 psi but still wouldn't fire off.

And your right..I didn't quite read that right on the ignition timing. Sorry.

[EclipseGST]

If you have access to a scan tool with data stream, watch the crank sensor and distributor RPM's while you're cranking and see if they are similar in numbers or reading at all.

If they are both very close in numbers to eachother, I would suggest a compression test. I know it sucks but it could tell you a lot.

[Perkul8r]

I will try that this weekend. Hopefully it will warm up. lol. Doubt it though.

[Perkul8r]

Also..is it possible to have a bad Crank position sensor but no check engine light? I have been doing a bunch more reading over on club3g and there seems to be a lot of this kinda issue that the cps was bad.

[EclipseGST]

Thats why I said to check it with a scan too. You can datalog the crank position sensor and see if it is in sync with the distributor/cam position sensor.