94 Transport 3800 problems

[thunder231]

My Son gave this to me, it has lots of problems, and since I am retired, I wanted to try and get it back into shap. When he brought it, he replaced the engine with a low milege engine.
Questions; How do I tell if this is a 3.8 or smaler engine?
And I read on here about using a paperclip to find the Codes, however, this has a plug with two rows of 6, but only one harness with 4 wires in it connects to back of this plug, one green,pupple, black & a white one. going from letf to right, top to bottom,... the black is #6, green #9, pupple #10, & white is on #12 of the plug. Does this mean that I can't use the paperclup to check codes on this vehicle?
This vehicle had a eradict miss, not all the time, just most of the time,.. I have checked some of the things I seen on here. But not of it help so far. I don't have a presure guage to check fuel pump, but noticed that if I turn key on, and open gas line, that only a first bursh of fuel comes out, not sure if there is a saftly relay to shut off pump. also if I just press the fuel presure check valve by enjectors, that only a little first bursh of fuel comes out of it too. Other main problem, is that after driving a while, about 2 out of every 10 times you go to start it, it will not crank,.. not click or anything,... after about 15 to 30 min. later it will crank.

[nicke66]

Originally Posted by thunder231

My Son gave this to me, it has lots of problems, and since I am retired, I wanted to try and get it back into shap. When he brought it, he replaced the engine with a low milege engine.
Questions; How do I tell if this is a 3.8 or smaler engine?
And I read on here about using a paperclip to find the Codes, however, this has a plug with two rows of 6, but only one harness with 4 wires in it connects to back of this plug, one green,pupple, black & a white one. going from letf to right, top to bottom,... the black is #6, green #9, pupple #10, & white is on #12 of the plug. Does this mean that I can't use the paperclup to check codes on this vehicle?
This vehicle had a eradict miss, not all the time, just most of the time,.. I have checked some of the things I seen on here. But not of it help so far. I don't have a presure guage to check fuel pump, but noticed that if I turn key on, and open gas line, that only a first bursh of fuel comes out, not sure if there is a saftly relay to shut off pump. also if I just press the fuel presure check valve by enjectors, that only a little first bursh of fuel comes out of it too. Other main problem, is that after driving a while, about 2 out of every 10 times you go to start it, it will not crank,.. not click or anything,... after about 15 to 30 min. later it will crank.

Yes, you have to use a scanner reader or a interface cable to connect a PC with sutable software, to get the codes for 3.8 1994-1995. This cars has not OBDII, but an extended version of OBDI, for which the paper clip trick does not work.

The 3.8 engine has no disttributor, but three ignition coils.

Please read my message about reading the codes with PC.

One thing that use to failure is the EGR valve. Normally this will light the CEL. You can try to disconnect the plug to the EGR valve and see if the missfire disappears.

[thunder231]

Thanks, this has the three ignition coils, so guess it is a 3.8 And I unpluged the EGR, but no change, still missfires. Notice cyl 5, seems to be the one that missfiles when engine is running bad at idle. I check wire, plug, & switch the fuel injector between another cyl, but still was #5 that missfired, but not all the time, sometime it run smoth, and other times shakes a lot and dies.

Originally Posted by nicke66

Yes, you have to use a scanner reader or a interface cable to connect a PC with sutable software, to get the codes for 3.8 1994-1995. This cars has not OBDII, but a extended version of OBDI, for which the paper clip trick does not work.

The 3.8 engine has no disttributor, but three ignition coils.

Please read my message about reading the codes with PC.

One thing that use to failure is the EGR valve. Normally this will light the CEL. You can try to disconnect the plug to the EGR valve and see if the missfire disappears.

[Viala]

I had this kind of problem , when you stop the engine hot , you have to wait to start again, someone told me it was the electric selector for PRND21 on the transmission with bad contacts.
I have resolved the problem with a pushbutton in the car and a wire coming from the solenoid to the + or - I don't remember now
Take care because you can run the strater in any positions of PRND
I found an advantage , if the engine stall you are not obliged to stop and restart you can restart while running!

[nicke66]

Originally Posted by Viala

I had this kind of problem , when you stop the engine hot , you have to wait to start again, someone told me it was the electric selector for PRND21 on the transmission with bad contacts.
I have resolved the problem with a pushbutton in the car and a wire coming from the solenoid to the + or - I don't remember now
Take care because you can run the strater in any positions of PRND
I found an advantage , if the engine stall you are not obliged to stop and restart you can restart while running!

Have you been able to verify that it is really the PRND21 that is the problem? If I am not wrong, you have an interface cable and software for your PC, and by monitoring the data from the ECM you should be able to see it the ECM lost the PRND21 signal.

[formulaross]

I had a '92 Transport that also had a come-and-go miss. Turned out to be a burned exhaust valve. Cost about $1150 for a head job at 115K miles. Afterwards, found a cracked hose on the intake manifold that probably let a gulp of air in when I would punch the pedal and the engine torqued over. That probably burned the valve. Yes, I would let the engine wind out sometimes; I was in my mid-life crisis. I also had a fuel pump that would lose pressure when the fuel level was very low and the engine would sputter and run rough, so I had that replaced about 125K miles.

I also had ignition switch problems in this vehicle and had to replace 2 of them during its 252K mile life. What I would notice is the gauges would be dead and the tranny would start out in 3rd gear from a stop. Replace the switch and everything works again. The contacts in the switch that were burned out also fed power to the power windows. Once I got the kids trained to run one window at a time, the ignition switches stopped burning out.

[daman]

VIN-L=3800

[toon-guy]

Where Can I Spot This Egr Valve?

[nicke66]

Originally Posted by toon-guy

Where Can I Spot This Egr Valve?

lIFT tHE hOOD. tHE eGR iS a lITTLE tO tHE rIGHT,iN fRONT oF tHE iTAKE. iT lOOKS lIKE a cYLINDER, wITH a 5-pIN pLUG oN tHE tOPP.