On 14 Mar 2005 16:52:53 -0800, jim rozen
wrote:

In article , Eric R Snow says...

This is what confuses me. It has spark at the right time. It would not
even pop with WD40.

WD has a pretty low vapor pressure really. My personal favorite
is Berkible carb cleaner. The propellant is propane and it's
chock full of other flammable solvent goodies.

It has proper compressioin. The timing belt has
not slipped. No exhaust obstruction. I'm wondering if maybe there is
enough energy to trigger the timing light but not enough to get good
spark.

This could be. I have a *lot* of experience with sub-adequate
sparks from motorcycle magnetos. The kind that will give a
yellow flicker in daylight but simply won't fire a jug.

The spark has to be a good blue snap that you can see and
hear in the daylight or it's suspect. Most timing lights
however do trigger off the inductive pulse so if it's triggering
then the spark *should* be happening.

After I replace the rotor and cap I'll know more. But it's
weird. It ran fine on the way to work. It was parked in front of the
shop all day with the big door open. I live in a rural area and so it
is really unlikely someone snuck up and changed something while I
wasn't looking. At the end of the day it won't start. After the
episode where it barely ran it won't pop at all. Tomorrow I'll finish
the tool to adapt a gauge and check fuel pressure,

I had to do this with the famous camry-of-death. I purchased another
banjo bolt for where the fuel line exited the filter, drilled, tapped,
and brazed in a tiny clippard hose barb. From there to a 60 psi
gage zip-tied to the side-view mirror.

Do NOT put the gage inside the passenger compartment!

Has this vehicle recently been run out of gas? I mean, down to
the bottom, car quits kind of runout? I've had a case where
the last slug of water got into the paper pleat filter, and
swelled the fibers up, so bad I could not even get any *air*
through it after I lathed it open.

Another fuel issue is that there's a pressure regulator valve
on the end of the fuel rail, that bypasses fuel back to the
tank to maintain a particular pressure based on manifold vacuum.
If that goes bad you can have problems too.

Jim
Jim- Nice blue spark. The car has never been run out of gas. And the
liquid coming out of the gas line is gas-not water. I too have had
trouble with weak sparks. Seems common with old bikes and old
outboards.
Eric