Has spark but No fuel pressure

[dani9678]

My brother has a 1990 Plymouth Laser turbo with 5speed. The problem is that he is not getting any fuel to the engine. After reading a procedure in the Haynes manual on testing the fuel pump by jumping a test terminal straight to the positive side of the battery to listen for the pump I heard nothing. I had my brother put his ear to the fuel filler neck to lesson for a whine but he didn't hear anything. So the next step was to test the fuel pump relay. So I took it out and performed all of the tests accordingly and found that the relay is good. I don't no what else to check. This is a project car that my brother is getting from a guy that he worked with. The car needed an ECU because somebody that this guy knew borrowed it from him for their car while he had the engine out replacing the clutch and the motor mounts. That so called friend of his skipped town and never came back. Anyways we have replaced it with another one of the same type.

Any ideas on what else to check? I haven't checked the pump itself yet. He said that the car ran fine before He pulled the engine. He also apparently filled the fuel tank up before he parked it. If I pull the intake off of the throttle body and shoot a little throttle body cleaner in there it will run. So I figure that if we can get fuel to the engine then all will be good hopefully.

Matt
Jacksonville, FL

 

[eclipsh]

Check along the power suply lines and see where you have voltage and how much. It should help narrow down the search. IE, do you have voltage at the fuel pump with the ignition on? At the Relay? I've had relays pass Chilton's tests but not work in the car.

 

[dani9678]

When I put the relay back in I held it with my hand and when I turned the key to the ON position I felt it click and when I would turn it off it would click. I will be checking the voltage at the fuel pump in the morning. I'll let you know what the outcome is.

Matt
Jacksonville, FL

 

[oldman]

Make sure you jump the right plug for the fuel pump instead of the ignition base timing plug. I swear I'm not speaking from experience.

 

[dani9678]

The plug that I jumped is located on the passenger side of the firewall next to a couple other connectors.

Ok here is what I did.

I checked for voltage at the connector to the fuel pump at the rear of the car first without the jumper wire attached then after the jumper wire was attached. I had no voltage. So I checked for resistance. The black wire was getting 0.00 on the meter but the black with yellow stripe wire was getting 0.40 which appears to be a partial ground. I wanted to find out if the fuel pump was good and also to see if I could get the engine to run so, I was able to get another battery from another car and I ended up hooking the fuel pump to the battery thru a toggle switch. The fuel pump did work so that was a relief. I was able to get the car to run after I hooked the fuel pump to the battery but it took a while for all of the injectors to kick in. Especially after it had been sitting for almost a year. At first it was only running on one cylinder. You should of heard it. It would fire once every second. Eventually one by one the other injectors started to kick in. I would say that the problem with the injectors was that they were probably stopped up from fuel that dried up and became varnish.
After I was able to get it to run on it's own I began to look around at different things to see if there was anything amis. I noticed that the Tach wasn't working and the boost guage wouldn't move from much at all when I would goose it. Also I noticed that there was a lot of slack in the throttle cable for some reason. I could see that there seems to be a motor attached in-line with the cable I guess for cruise control. I don't know. This car is all new to me. I am used to seeing a vacuum assist cruise control setup.

Now here is what I need to know. Does anybody have any vacuum diagrams that I could use to make sure that everything is hooked up right. I was using a Haynes manual that came with the car to start with but it wasn't much help with the wiring and especially the vacuum lines. Speaking of wiring diagrams, If anybody has some of those that they could post or e-mail me if possible that would be great. The car is a 1990 Plymouth laser turbo with a 5-speed. I am sorry for such a long post. Ok here is a quick run down to some it all up.

Vacuum diag, Electrical diag, and if anybody has any info as to what could be causing the tach and fuel pump not to work please let me know. My email address is [email protected].

Thanks all so far for the help

Matt
Jacksonville, FL

P.S. If I get this car to run right and I like how it is on gas mileage and handles I might end up driving it to work and give(sale)my truck to my brother.

 

[eclipsh]

If you plan on keeping the car you should go buy a DSM manual CD or factory manual. You'll definately end up needing one or the other. You can pick one up on eBay.

 

[dani9678]

Okay. I was able to get the fuel pump to run off of the car now. The last couple of things that I need to do so far is get the Tach guage to work and figure out how to get about 3 inches of slack out of the throttle cable. I went ahead and bought a CD-ROM shop manual for $8 including shipping from alex548 on Ebay. It includes all 3 DSM models from 90-99. But it will probably be about a week or 2 before it gets here and I just wanted to know if somebody could send me a page from their shop manual that discusses adjusting the Cruise control/Throttle control assembly. The Haynes manual that I was using last night says that the cruise control on the DSM is vacuum assist when it is really controlled by a motor. It goes on to tell you that you have to adjust 3 cables when their is only 2. And the assembly that it shows doesn't look anything like what I have been dealing with. The only time that I see the motor assist cruise setup is in another chapter were it shows a picture of it and telling me how to remove the assembly in order to get to something on the back of the engine. I think it was the starter.
Again. If anybody has a CD-Rom version of the shop manual could you email me the page on the throttle/cruise adjustment procedure.

Thanks much

Matt