1999 Acura TL Crank No Start

I've been working on a neighbor's car for the past two months in my spare time doing what I can to get it to start. I've narrowed down the issue to be fuel related.

I changed the Fuel Relay, identified no fuel pressure at the rail, and got a positive test for power at the pump. I sprayed starting fluid in one of the intakes and got a good reaction. Is this going to be the fuel pump being faulty? As in, it pumps gas but not enough/not enough pressure to reach the engine. I've been hesitant on jumping to conclusions but at this point I've grown tired of the endeavor. I'm just a dude who works on my car on the side, I wouldn't call myself a mechanic.

I'm planning to buy a fuel pump from Amazon on Friday to see if that will be the end-all be-all with this car. Does anyone have any input? Am I in the right direction here? The codes read recently a code concerning the shift solenoid, but the car hasn't been started for months. The guys working on it before me thought it was spark plugs, starter, timing belt, etc.

The neighbor mentioned the car shutting off while driving if I remember correctly.

Does the pump turn on at all? Does pressure build up at the rail/flow gas to the rail when you jumper the fuel pump relay?

That's a dope quote. The fuel pump turns on, but there's no pressure at the rail. I thought about the fuel pressure regulator being an issue as well because I smell gas when the engine gets a good spray of starting fluid

There are more dope quotes to come...

What exactly does "good reaction" mean, the engine starts?

Using your DVOM you may look at the following:

Does the pump's supply voltage hold up while the pump is spinning and the voltage at the negative side of the pump stays low at the same time?

Do you have injector pulses?

juergen.scholl wrote:

There are more dope quotes to come...

:lol: Juergen is the dopest! :silly: :lol:

When I spray starting fluid the car doesn't start, but it sounds like the engine is about to turn over. The rpm meter fluctuates for a moment between 0-700 and then it quickly stops (4-8 seconds I would say). That's the only indicator that I'm getting warmer to the issue.

What does DVOM mean? And supply voltage? I bought a mechanic's stethoscope but don't have an extra set of hands to listen to each of the 6 injectors. That's what you meant my injector pulse, right?

DVOM - digital volt/ohm meter,.

You could use just any multimeter though one with min/max function would be great when working alone. It will record the highest and lowest values during the process and store them so you can look at them after the fact That way you also can check for injector pulse.

Supply voltage is the 12 volt feed that gets to the pump. It's the positive +12 Volt coming to the pump from the relay, a fuse etc. The voltage right at the pump shouldn't fall significantly - not more than 500 millivolts - from battery voltage during cranking. If the so called voltage drop is more, then that points to a problem: high resistance.

On the negative side of the pump (the one that connects to battery ground) you want to see close to 0 volts when cranking as well. If the voltage rises more than a couple of hundreds millivolts this points to a ground side problem: all the voltage that "can't go away" also can't be used by the pump. It would indicate a resistance problem on that ground side.

It is very important that the pump is running during these measurements. Only then the test results are valid!

To test the injectors you would connect the red multimeter probe to the injector's ground wire and the black probe to chassis ground or battery negative. The ground wire is the one of the two within the connector that doesn't show voltage once you disconnect the connector from the injector and open the switch. When reconnected the voltage reading during cranking should flicker and a minimum value close to 0 volts should be seen by the multimeter.

Instead of a DVOM you can grab a testlight to check for injector pulse as well. Using the same testlight over at the fuel pump it's brightness or lack of it might clue you in as well about electrical problems. You may want to ask the (interested?) vehicle owner to assist with the tests that are difficult to do alone

I may have one with the min/max setting. The owner and I aren't on great terms anymore, but I think I have a test probe. I'll do those tests when I can get some time to revisit the vehicle. I'll report back in a number of days