No Spark - Help Me Diagnose

[sethduncan]

Ok friends. Here's the rub.

1995 3000GT Base

Ran fine for years, quit running, cranks but no start. Discovered that no plugs are getting spark. I've tried a few things but for completeness let's just say that aside from the plugs, nothing has been tried.

So, hit me. What needs tested. Anything that could feasibly cause a lack of spark to all cylinders but allow the car to still crank and get fuel.

Thanks

[edit: FIXED. Long story. Read below]

Ok so it's important to know the history here.

The car was driving fine 3 years ago. I helped the then-owner do a timing-belt job. Shortly after doing the timing belt, a friend was driving the car and heard clunking, sputtering and all sorts of racket and the car died. We dug into it a bit and found that the metal bracket on the belt side of the engine that bolts between the heads had not been properly secured, fallen into the TB cover and wedged itself neatly at the bottom, carving up the timing belt and making all sorts of ruckus.

We cleaned up the mess, checked timing and found it hadn't skipped at all. We counted our blessings, replaced the belt again and started the car. It ran ok, but was occasionally missing. The stuttering/missing problem got worse pretty quick and after a few minutes we couldn't even get the car to start. Since then it's sat there, a mystery of diagnosing.

The last few weeks I dug around the internets and came to the conclusion that my next best bet was to check the Crank Position Sensor. I got the part removed and compared it to the replacement part.



You may notice the old part looks a bit scoured. As it turns out, the "ninja star", a metal piece that passes through the Crank Position Sensor to assist in sending the signal to the ECU, had also been bent up due to that metal bracket and had succeeded in chopping up the CPS. I put the new CPS on the car and the ninja star would not clear it.

This weekend I'll be removing the timing belt, the crank gear and the ninja star and attempting to fix it, but I honestly believe this is the cause of all my problems because it perfectly explains what happened, the odd symptoms and the scenario. Future edit coming when I actually get the car running.

[BaadVR4]

Cam or crank angle sensor most likely, I think.

[Steve '92ES]

Start simple. Check the fuses (all of them..).
How do you know you're getting fuel?

[sethduncan]

Replaced the PTU with a known-good one from my Stealth, still no start. It occurred to me that I never checked the fuel, I just assumed it was no spark because I hooked up a timing light to the spark wires and it didn't flash. Suppose the timing light could've been lying. I'll check the fuel tonight.

[sethduncan]

**Bump**

Nearly fixed! Problem discovered. Hopefully this helps someone else at some point.