Hello all!
My buddies 2000 2WD 3.0L Montero Sport died on him on his way home last night. As he was rounding a corner the engine started sputtering out and the gauges went wacky for a few seconds then it died on him. He coasted into the parking lot of a fast food joint and he could not get it to crank back up.

I stopped by with my code reader and it was showing a P0170 and a P0303.
His CEL has been on for over a year with the P0170 code showing so that was not new but the P0303 is a new one.

The car has a strong crank but will not start. We shot some starting fluid in the throttle body hoping to get some attempt to crank but nothing. He is going to have it towed to his house this morning so we can hopefully get it running. We know the normal drill of testing a crank, no start (check for spark, fuel pressure, etc...) but in the meantime I was hoping someone could throw in their 2 cents.

What we know so far: Electrically the car seems fine. Dash, interior lights everything else electrically looks fine. I forgot to ask but I do believe the gauges are working fine now. Car has a strong crank but will not start. The engine just turns over like none of the plugs are getting a spark or the car is getting no fuel. We did notice a STRONG odor of raw fuel coming from the tailpipe after several attempts trying to crank it.

Seems like there is ONE thing holding it back . This car does not show crank position data on my scanner. Could this be bad? If so, how could we check it?

ANY input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

timing belt

 

Hmmmm, I do not know if it is an "interference" engine, hopefully not. It could be as MXMIKIE said and the timing belt is the issue if it came off or ate the belt. I am not familiar with this engine, I wish I knew all the characteristics of it.

If the timing belt is fine, then I would check the sensor. It could be attached to the cam or even the crank on some engines. Yea, they call it "crank postion" even if it is attached to the cam because of the relatioship between them.

A "no data from the crank postion sensor" would steer me to that sensor as you would not get any spark if that failed or was not working. (Kind of like a broken distributor shaft in the "old days", which was rare.) It may be that the connector to the sensor came off somehow, which is doubtfull as it is usually afixed with a clip unless someone worked on it and did not put it back correctly. Or the wires in the harness for the sensor are an open circuit or the sensor itself is bad.

How to check it is bad? I believe most of them are "hall effect" sensors and I think that the only way to check it is to supply it with the correct voltage, move the vane between the sensor and you should get some voltage output or you may need an oscilloscope, have not gone that far when mine failed. There may be some information on the web how to check "hall effect" sensors if this is one. But as your scanner said no data I would suspect the sensor itself IF you are getting the correct voltage to it but it does not start. Hopefully you have a good relationship with some auto parts people as I know they do not like taking 'returns' on electrical components for people swapping parts in and out trying to find the bad one. I know this is an expensive component on my TSI.

So, check the timing belt first and if that is correct, then check the sensor wiring and connections and if that is correct, then I would start to think that it is a bad sensor.

The gauges going "wacky" might have been a result of the engine dying and the lights came on like they do when you first crank it to start maybe ??? don't know about this one.

 

mxmikie, We thought maybe the belt broke or possibly it skipped a tooth or two. My buddy said he would call me yesterday morning to let me know if he needed my help or not. I did not hear back from him and I would out doing some last minute shopping so I will check in with him today to see if he figured anything out.

_93TSI_370+K_, What I mean by my scanner not showing any CPS data was that it did not even appear as an option of data to view on my scanner. It is not like it was showing the value as 0.

Thanks for the info guys, I will check back to let you know what it was.

 

http://www.gates.com/common/download...ementGuide.pdf