90 Talon AWD won't start. Can you tell me what to look for?

[JasonMeyer]

Hello and greetings to all DSM lovers. I bought my 1990 Eagle Talon TSi AWD brand new in 1990 and have loved it ever since. Now, I have a problem and would like your advice on how to diagnose the problem. My car sat in my garage for 6 months only to be started and warmed up every other week or so. Last weekend I decided to finally get it out and start driving it again. It ran OK, but would not idle. Took it to the Mitsubishi dealership and they made some adjustments and then it idled OK. Now.. driving it daily for about a week, everything fine. Today after work I got in it and started it up. After idling for 3-5 seconds it got kind of choppy and died. As it did this I noticed that the tach was jumping up and down between zero and 3k.. At this moment I began to smell a distinct burned electronics smell so I quickly shut off the key. I sat back for a moment and thought to check the fuses. Couldn't see anything obvious.. Opened the hood and did not see anything obvious here either. I turned the key on and tried to see if anything was shorting out but could not see/hear/smell anything strange. Tried to start the engine but it would just turn over. Turns over fine but never fires. Had my girlfriend pick me up and went home. Later this evening I drove back and looked over it closer, but still couldn't find anything obviously wrong. Everything electronic works, gauges come on when I turn the key. I did notice that the check engine light comes on very faint when I turn on the key. Not sure if this was coming on before or not. Anyway, turning the engine over it does not even try to fire or startup. I think that something inside the cabin shorted out somewhere but I have no idea where to start looking other than around the fusebox above the leftside kick panel.. Anyone have any ideas on where to start looking? I have not worked on this car much but have worked on other cars so I have a little knowledge of how things work. Thanks for any advice you can give me.

Thanks,
JasonMeyer

[joemathews]

Check that the battery is charged enough. Hook up a charger or have someone jump your car to ensure that it is not an old battery problem. If the ignition fuse were the problem, then you would not get the car to turn over at all.

Other things to check are cracks in the spark plug wires. If there are bare spots, the wires could be grounding out on the valve cover. How old are the spark plugs?

[JasonMeyer]

The battery is charged enough. It was replaced right before I parked it and it has started the engine a dozen times since I have started driving it. The engine is turning over normal. Spark Plugs and Spark Plug wires were replaced about 5k miles ago. Thanks for the advice so far.. any other ideas??

[helliviknow]

id sniff at the ecu for a minute..see if it smells funny.. maybe a coil pack? are you possitive it has gas because iv done that before and no i dont wanna talk bout it lol.. other than that id check pull out a spark plug and see if its geting spark.. maybe you got a set of defect plug wires or somthin..

[kjewer1]

I was gonna say "this might sound funny, but check the ECU"... But helliviknow said it also. ECU is a prime suspect on a 90, the caps leak and take out the board. Hopefully it survived and just hte caps need replacing (very cheap). IF not, you may need an ECU. 90 non-eprom ecus are not expensive. Less than 50 bucks.