Hi,

New to the forum..

I have a '95 mirage 1.5L, over 150K. It's been a great car.

Recently I was driving and while accelerating the car would not go any faster just stayed the same speed. Then it died.

Waited for about 30 minutes and then it started the first try, drove it about 1/2 mile died again same way as before. Lost acceleration and then just died.

Had to have it towed home. Checking various things, had fuel flow out of fuel filter. No spark from plug.
Bought and installed new dist. cap, and rotor and new plugs. They needed to be replaced anyway.

Still no spark. Bought and installed new (rebuilt from autozone) ignition distributor (coil?). Car starts first try! Yeah.. but wait.

Test drive to autozone to get something else unrelated to this problem. No problem getting there and leaving. About half way back to my house the car won't acclerate and dies again. The trip was about a 15 minute trip, car running about 7 minutes when it died again.

Car will not start again.

My next two guesses are the ECU or the new ignition distributor I got from autozone quit working. I think I have located a ECU used at a salvage yard.

Am I heading in the right direction or does anyone have other suggestions, other things to check? Is there a way to check the ignition distributor, not like a normal coil.
Is there a code reader I can get that will read mitsubishi codes?

Thanks

Steve

i think any code reader will get a mitsubishi code, it just wont say what it means, it will say factory code or something like that. Then you can go online and get what it means. What about an alternator problem? not sure if it would cause no spark. Just thowing stuff out there.

Tried the salvage yard ECU, no go! Took the cover off of my ECU and it looks great. No leaking caps or anything ugly. No burnt smell.

Luckily I can take the salvage yard ECU back.

Don't know about a bad alternator, no problem keeping the battey charged. No other symptoms of a bad alternator.

I am going to try another ignition distributor in case the rebuilt one was bad.

Could something cause the ignition distributor to go bad?

Mirage's are known to have trouble with coil packs........that's about all i got.

Ok an update.

Car is running so far.

Salvage yard ECU did not help.

Returned the new ignition distributor to autozone for an exchange. Installed the new one and it worked. Car started first crank.
Slavage yard ECU did work fine with the new ignition dist. as did my original ECU. Returned the salvage yard ECU, had to pay a 20% restock fee.

Found a web site that said to check the battery voltage, signal voltages and ground connections before installing a new ignition distributor. The web site said if the readings are off the distributor will work only for a short time.
I checked all the things they recommend and all were within specs.

If this turns out to be the fix it really sucks I got a bad part from autozone!

Here is the web site with the wiring diagram and items to check for an ignition distributor. I am not sure what these ignition distributors are for but the wiring matched mine.

http://www.crownreman.com/tech_help/distributors/13330005/index.html

what about the voltage regulator? It could be that.

I checked it, it was putting out the about 14volts.

Hmmm, when you turn the key, does it make a sound in the engine like its about to start or does it just make a small tick sound from the ignition spot?

try checking the crank sensor,.,.,.,.,.,or cam sensor,.,.,.,