Astro Van Stall When Idling

[LIMONADA]

Symptoms observed are as follows.

Vehicle will stall when allowed to idle. We removed the air cleaner assembly and observed the injectors firing. With fuel pump relay bypassed the injectors stopped pulsing and the van stalled. When we tried to restart the van then neither injector would fire.We tried disconnecting the oil pressure switch to see if it was causing the computer to shu down the injectors, due to lack of oil pressure. No joy, we gave the engine a shot of ether and it rolled over. The injectors then began to fire and the van continue to run. After about a minute or so the injectors again shut down killing the engine. We brought the rpm up and obsreved the injector pulse. The pattern was a good conical pattern without any drips in the center. Running the engine up to about 2k and back down to around 1k and the engine still showed a good pattern. We then let the engine idle and it did not stall. We then shut the engine down and restarted it about 3 or 4 more times. The injectors would give a momentary extra surge on the pulse and then would settle back into a normal run pattern. The one thing we did notice was that when using the ether to restart the engine on the initial stall outs, the initial pulse when the van started was like the pulse when it was running. After we ran it for the short term rpm increase and it turned it off the restart caused the injectors to pulse more fuel for 1 or 2 hits on the initial start up and then taper off to a normal firing pattern.

This occurs usually after the car has been running it dies while it idles. Once I get it going with Ether and keep the rpm going for awhile the problem wont occur again. So long as I dont allow it to idle.

I was told the crank sensor may be acting up. If you know what the problem is, Can you please help me

[RABarrett]

Since you did not mention model year, I will assume that it is a TBI unit. I assume this since you mentioned that you observed the pattern. The problem appears to involve the ignition module. This unit provides the signal the computer uses to operate the injectors. It will require some troubleshooting, but I suspect that the module in the distributor is your culprit. Ray

[LIMONADA]

I will have a friend run the error codes to see if it is the Ignition module. Thank you for the suggestion. It seems to mostly happen after the engine has run for a while.