96 88 won't start after repair

[ss396_69]

I had antifreeze going into my engine and lots of white smoke coming out of my exhaust. I drove the car into my garage, and began a teardown – assuming that it was a headgasket. Then I read in here about these series II having the defective plenums, so I re-inspected and found that there indeed was a problem by the EGR tube. So, I reinstalled the head, reinstalled the lower manifold, and installed the Dorman upper kit. But, I can not get it to start now! It will fire while cranking, so I cleaned all the sparkplugs and they all spark under cranking, as well. There is fuel at the rail, and I have checked all the wiring and hoses against my 97 Park Avenue 3.8 series II for correctness. The Olds has 160K on it, but ran well before the plenum failed. What could I have screwed up during this repair? Please advise, Thanks!

[maxwedge]

Welcome to AF. Something was left off, check all the sensors and connectors for the efi harness, tough to tell from here what you did or did not do. Do you have injector pulse, and spark, will it start with carb cleaner sprayed into the intake? All the coolant purged from the cylinders? Plugs not wet?

[ss396_69]

I did try spraying some starting fluid into the throttle body, but it had little effect. I have cranked it over with the spark plugs out, to help kick out any remaining antifreeze. The spark plugs appear wet when I pull them (smell like gas), but they will spark against a ground, while cranking. I don't know how to confirm injector pulse; a bit "old school" here - not a lot of test equipment. I will go back again, and recheck all the harness connections, just in case I did miss something. It is quite confusing, because there is some firing, and some occasional "fluff" noises that come from the intake area.

[maxwedge]

Are you sure the wires are on the right plugs, recheck the firing order also.

[ss396_69]

Do all the 3.8 series II have the same firing order? I have been using my 97 Park Avenue as an example, to check all my routings (once the Olds refused to start).

[maxwedge]

All K engines are the same.

[delta8811]

this site shows the firing order for all 3800 engines
http://www.autozone.com/az/cds/en_us...rInfoPages.htm

[ss396_69]

Great! Thanks for the help! I'm out to get my fingernails dirty, I'll let you know how I come out...

[ss396_69]

I have rechecked all of the things that I did during the teardown/reassembly, and it all looks good!? When I try to start it, it acts like it is out of time. As I stated earlier, I drove it into the garage before I replaced the plenum. I can only guess that I had a simultaneous failure of something else; when I shut it down. Before I go nuts and just start tearing it down again, is there a logical process I should follow to eliminate the “easy” things? Please advise, Thanks!