97 4.3 Not Starting

I have a 97 Sierra with a 4.3 in it. The truck has 236,000 miles on it.

The truck ran great up to a couple days ago. My father in law was driving it and he said he started it, put in gear to drive off and it just died. It will not start now. The fuel pump is priming when you first turn the key. I haven't had a chance to look at it, but my FIL said he pulled a couple plug wires and there is no spark.

I've been doing some reading online and I've seen bad crank sensor as a good possibility. Is this a common problem? I'm not wanting to sink a ton of money into this truck with its mileage.

I don't know if it's a common problem, but it does happen often enough. I don't know how much a new sensor is, or how difficult it is to get to, but one option to consider is a junk yard. I recently had problems with one of my vehicles, and thought it may have been an electrical part. Rather than spend the $40+ on a "guess", I went to the local junk yard and got the part for $5, which is a good thing, because it wasn't what was wrong with it.

If you can get yours out easy enough, see if there's a part number on it, then see which models/years use that same part number as I'm sure there are more than just your year/model that do. Once you know what models/years it's used on, go to the junk yard and get one.

If it works, awesome, if it doesn't at least you didn't spend full price on a part that didn't fix it, and in many cases, you won't be able to return. Then you'll know it's not that sensor, and can start looking at other things like coils and other sensors..

Thanks for the thoughts. I'd actually been thinking about doing exactly what you suggested.

Turned out to be a bad ignition control module, but now we are having a no charge issue! UGH!!