doubleurx

First, it's been a while since I've been on here so Hi again to all.

The car: 1991 C4 cab w/ 69,000 miles

Just like it states - the starter turns, the engine briefly fires then kaput!

This just randomely started and is the first problem I have ever had with the car. It is being towed to a shop next week. It really needed some other work as well. It has been leaking a little and if a new seal job is required, it is getting new clutch and flywheel as well.

Any thoughts on obvious things to check? Distributers, plugs, wires, fuses I have checked to the best of my ability (which isn't sayin much).

Thanks

chancecasey

Search for DME relay and you will find threads on how to "hotwire" around it to see if it is bad. Pretty common culprit if everything else about the car hasn't changed. Sure it has fuel?

Are you in Truckee as in Tahoe? If so, I have a like-new LUK dual-mass flywheel for sale with only 10K miles on it.

pat056

Yes, the ole DME relay. I would locare it, take it out, and put it back in. This has worked for me several times. Or just jiggle it. It's in the fuse box, on the passenger's side front under the hood. A retangled thingy. It will say "DME" on it.
pm if u need further help with it. I'd bet that's it.
Also, get yourself a spare. they're cheap and fail rather frequently.

doubleurx

Yes it has fuel..........ha ha ha! Thanks for the "hotwire" search, I will give that a try. I would be very happy if it is something simple like that.

Yes I am near Tahoe. Thanks for the offer on the clutch, I'll consider that if I indeed need to get the engine out.

doubleurx

It's funny, I guess since I never ran into the problem, somehow I missed seeing all the other folks running into the same thing. I did remove and reinstall all the relays, but I'll give the DME another whack and see what happens.

pat056

BTW, if it's leaking oil out of the bottom of the engine (where the heads come together). Well, you DO know this is common on 964's, don't you? I've had 2 and if that's what it is and it's just weeping, I wouldn't fix it IMHO.

pat056

If replacing the DME doesn't fix it, I'd suspect the fuel pump. It you getting power past the DME, I'm pretty sure it would have to be the fuel pump.

doubleurx

Yes I know they leak quite a bit. It's gotten a lot worse over the last year, probably due to me not driving it enough.

The shop I'm bringing it to comes highly recommended, so we shall see. It needs a little motor TLC as I was hearing a little knock at WOT.

doubleurx

Well it wasn't the DME or the fuel pump. I had the car towed by a friend to the shop today. I was very impressed with the Mechanic. He immediately said: "I'm guessing the little belt on the distributer broke". Sure enough he poked around for 10 minutes and found that the little belt had indeed broken. Hopefully no other damage ensued. He seemed pretty confident that it would be a simple rebuild of the distributer. He is also looking at the leaks, but also stated that small leaks are common and really not worth a full re-seal, unless anything was damaged due to the distributer failure.

parsecnc4

That is a bit surprising.... To my knowledge, the dual distributor design should still allow the car to idle and run when the distributor belt breaks. Unless one of the corresponding coil is bad also, I can't imagine your starting problems to be solely due to broken distributor belt.

I personally have not exprienced a broken belt and am simply relying on what I have read. Good luck and let us know what the final repairs come up to be.

doubleurx

I'll post more after he gets the distributer fixed. He plans to start it, then remove the oil filter and check for any potential metal debris in case more damage occurred. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will be a fairly minor repair. Once the motor has to be pulled, I'm looking at so much more as I am still running the stock flywheel and clutch at 70K miles.

doubleurx

So I got my car back. It is running amzingly well. They re-built both distributers and replaced the belt. I also had a minifold leak that they say was the no start issue. The total bill including an oil change came to $914.

It's great to have it back.

donoman

I don't know if you like working on your own car but anyway, the thing to do here is check spark & fuel. Now with this motor I am not sure how to do it but with every other car I've owned the sparkplugs were on the top and easy to get to.

In your case you would have seen no spark on the lines coming out of the broken distributor. You would have had spark on the other distributor, and that would have tipped you off that it was the faulty distributor. If both weren't sparking you would still want to open them up and look inside. If they looked good then you would go up the logic tree. By the way, since the DME is so easy to check, by all means check that first next time.

doubleurx

I knew it wasn't the DME relay as I could hear the fuel pump. I do work on the car for minor things, but for the most part I try to focus on what I do best and leave car repairs to those more qualified. On my STI, I found things much easier to work on and I would do more involved work on that car. The Porsche is just such an odd bird with really no space to access much. I suppose I could dig into it a little more, time will tell.