On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:51:43 GMT, Ken Sterling (Ken Sterling) wrote:

I'm getting desperate. I'm on an island. The car is a '92 Dodge Colt.
The import car fixer says my car isn't "foriegn" enough. The other guy
says it's too "foriegn". Here's what it is doing. Not running. It has
spark, compression, fuel pressure, and the timing is correct. The
manual says that if the car runs while starting and then dies when the
key springs back to the ON position then the fuel pump relay is bad.
But there is no relay where the book says to look and none anywhere I
can see. The dealership doesn't list one. He said to bring in the old
one and they would match it up. The car ran fine to work in the
morning and wouldn't start in the evening. The computer said it was a
bad mass air flow sensor. A new one is 400 bucks so my son went to the
wreckers and picked up a couple for twenty bucks. We put one on and
the car started but ran poorly. I was able to drive it about 1/4 mile
before it died. And while driving it would act like it was leaned out
real bad when I floored it. That was yesterday. Today it won't even
try to start. No matter which mass air flow sensor is connected. The
computer only returns the code now that says all is good. Any help
greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Eric R Snow
Just as an "off chance", did you very recently fill up with some "bad
gas" from someplace?????
Ken.

True story. A friend and I were riding from Portland, OR back home
near Shelton, WA and decided we best top off. Took exit 99 on I-5 and
topped off at the same pump, him on one side me on the other. We got
just about across the overpass back to the on-ramp when his bike died.

Pushed it back to the station and started checking everything over,
spark, compression, plugs, wires, everything. After a couple hours of
getting nowhere with it, we called a tow truck to bring it the last 45
miles back to my place.

We spent the next three days basically replacing parts and hoping we'd
find the problem. Took it to a shop, they couldn't find anything
wrong either. We'd ruled out fuel since my bike ran perfectly fine.
Guess what it turned out to be? Diesel. Yup, the fuel that came out
of his side of the pump (that was marked as super unleaded) turned out
to be friggin diesel. I wouldn't have believed if I didn't see it
with my own peepers.