Hi, truly sorry to hear of your troubles.
I'm brucepick on the other message boards where we bump into each other.
I second Dan's (pageda) suggestion that with a bit of sleuthing assistance from Brickboard you can probably get your car going again. We've certainly seen all the usual failure modes here on this board, and a number of truly uncommon failure modes that a local shop might never have seen or considered. If it were me, if the Suburban is available for a while I'd use that opportunity to figure out the problem independently.
If you'd rather have another shop do the work, a good friend of mine has been using a shop on the northwest side of Philadelphia. With good results.
Falcone Auto
161 Rock Hill Rd ,
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004
(610) 664-0944
Worth a phone call if you do want to take the car to another shop.
In my view, driving a brick can be very economical, but if a shop does a substantial portion of the maintenance work that changes. I wouldn't say that having a shop maintain a 240 is more expensive than having them maintain a Corolla or Civic or anything else - it just takes the cost of ownership out of the "dirt cheap" range.
Possible trouble causes - - - -
Problem stated - no spark/no start
Definitely as pageda wrote, failure of crank sensor or the ignition power stage will cause spark failure. Lots of old brick repair folks don't know about the crank sensor since it was first used in '89 and is nearly invisible.
Already proved fuel is flowing by cranking with fuel hose disconnected at fuel rail? If flowing OK there then pump(s) and filter should be considered OK. Possible that injectors have no signal or no ground but you can test for that; the test light is very inexpensive.
Proved no spark? My favorite is to pull the coil wire at the dizzy cap and tuck it in at the drivers side hood hinge. You can see the spark there from the drivers seat when you crank it, working solo.
Need to check that the cam shaft lobes rotate when cranking. Observe through oil fill cap opening. If not turning, timing belt is broken. Remotely possible that timing belt has slipped a tooth or two but I don't think that would cause an intermittent problem. Checking for jumped belt requires taking off at least one of the two timing cover front pieces. If you want to check for cam rotation working solo, pull the coil wire and with key out, use a 24 mm. socket to turn the crank (lowest belt pulley). Or just note cam position thru opening, bump engine with key, then check again. Cam should have moved.
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Sven: '89 245 NA, 951 ECU, expanded air dam, forward belly pan reaches oem belly pan, airbox heater upgraded, E-fan, 205/65-15 at 50 psi, IPD sways, no a/c-p/s belt, E-Codes, amber front corner reflectors, aero front face, quad horns, tach, small clock.
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