1996 Jeep Grand Cheokee 4.0 L6 No Start

[tannerr52]

Hey all.
I bought a 96 Jeep GC Laredo 4.0L about 3 weeks ago. Today it decided to not start. It cranks and cranks fine, but doesn't fire. I wiggled some of the wires leading from/to the distributor and coil, and it fired up. I then was driving it and lo and behold the thing died on a relatively dangerous curve, and the same problem happened. Wiggled the wires a bit again, and it fired up. Parked it, started it up again, no fire. It had a new distributor put on right before I bought it, as well as new plugs and wires. Could it be the coil? It was not replaced. I also wonder if i could be a Crank position sensor (Oh god I hope not), but I do not believe so because it flat out won't start. Should try changing the coil first? Would a bad CPS prevent the car from starting at all?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[rustydogy]

By your description and what you did to make it work, I would be looking at those wires to /from dist ,,coil.........before I started replacing parts . are the wires showings any stress ?, heat/cracked, lose feeling at or in connection ,? soft, oil soaked, blistered, things like that, Is the pickup in the dist. properly tightened down is it grounded correctly ?

[vgames33]

Sounds like a wiring problem, not a parts issue.

[Blt2Lst]

A bad crankshaft position sensor can cause these sort of intermittent problems. This is a very common problem on jeeps of that era..
Do a search on a jeep specific forum and you will see for yourself..

[MagicRat]

Jeeps not only have problems with the CPS, but also have trouble with the wiring.
The CPS of that era uses very low voltage, and thus are susceptible to failure from higher-than-normal resistance in the wires leading to the CPS.

Before replacing the CPS, try cleaning the terminals in the CPS wiring harness. Some Jeep folks bypass the CPS wiring plug and solder the wires directly, to reduce resistance.