the sometime non-starter

[kannonbal49]

I have a supercharged 3.8l park ave.ultra.(1993) sometimes when I go to start, it turns over but does not fire. It will start most of the time after a "rest" of five minutes to whatever. It died on me and when diagnosed there was no signal to starter. I replaced ignition and new keys. It worked fine for about two weeks and now it seems the problem is returning. Also once in a while it will die while I am driving. This thing is driving me crazy. None of the dealerships can seem to find anything because it always seems to start when they have it.

[yogi_123rd]

Hmmmm. Could be a lot of things. You should perform a few tests when the car doesn't start and assertain what is working and what is not working. It could be local to the engine or system wide through out the body too.

I had a weird problem. My car would periodically not start. When my car did not start, the power windows and the power seats would not work (The relays would just click). Theproblem occurred after a bad rain storm so I knew the real problem was a bad ground issue. I found I could start the car by playing with the windows and seats until they did work. This went on this way for about a year until finally the car wouldn't start at all. After 10 hours of tracing through circuits, the ECM or perhaps the connection to the ECM was bad. The ECM is located by the glove box along the inner firewall. I ended up junking the car and did not track it further.

If it is local to the engine, your crank sensor or electronic ignition is suspect to be marginal. If the body circuits are screwed up, god help you because you are looking for a bad ground.