Chrysler Town and Country. No spark

TRACY M

MEMBER
1996 CHRYSLER TOWN AND COUNTRY
6 CYL
FWD
AUTOMATIC
100,000 MILES

I have a 96 town and country. Ran fine. Then just would not start. Motor turns over. Changed coil pack, crank sensor, relays, checked voltage at crank sensor( its good) and still no spark. What should I try next?

Friday, January 7th, 2011 AT 12:36 AM

7 Replies

CARADIODOC

MECHANIC
33,916 POSTS

Measure the voltage on the dark green / orange wire at the coil pack or one of he injectors. There must be 12 volts there during engine cranking. If it's missing, suspect the camshaft position sensor.

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Friday, January 7th, 2011 AT 7:46 AM

TRACY M

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4 POSTS

Thanks for the reply but that wasn't it. The voltage was 9.7 so we changed the sensor and it still wont start. Any other ideas? We are stumped on this one.

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Friday, January 7th, 2011 AT 11:56 PM

CARADIODOC

MECHANIC
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Crankshaft position sensor would have been my first choice but you changed it already. Did you use the thick paper spacer to set the critical air gap, or did your new sensor have a thing plastic rib on the end?

If you have battery voltage on the dark green / orange wire during cranking, the cam and crank sensors are working and the automatic shutdown (ASD) relay is turning on.

If there is still no spark, next I would connect a scanner and view live data. It will show if the computer is seeing the pulses from the two sensors. It will also show if it is in theft mode.

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Saturday, January 8th, 2011 AT 6:31 AM

TRACY M

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4 POSTS

It had the plastic thing on the end. We tried a scanner but the engin won't start so the scanner won't read any codes. Going to try a new computer tonight. If its in theft mode will that help? Will that fix the problem? Trying to find someone with a better scanner to try too. Thanks again for the reply. Love this site.

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Monday, January 10th, 2011 AT 7:24 PM

CARADIODOC

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The engine doesn't have to run to get codes. That's the whole idea of codes. They're supposed to tell you why it won't run.

Theft mode will displayed as "Fuel: allowed" or "Fuel: off".

The crank sensor will be displayed as "CRK: yes" or "CRK: no".

The cam sensor will be "CPS: yes" or CPS: no". Both of those sensors can be viewed while cranking the engine. Some scanners display "present" instead of "yes" when pulses are being received.

Normally I would suggest that Chrysler has extremely little trouble with Engine Computers, especially compared to GM, but starting with the '96 model year, the engineers really screwed up a lot of stuff on the minivans. Chrysler copied a lot of stupid things GM and Ford were doing and they developed all the same problems. Problems with Engine and Body Computers are real common since that year.

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