Thread: Car dead, wont start !!FIXED!!

Well to start off my stupidity got me into this situation. I live in NY and as we all know it gets cold.

The LIM on my car leaks a lil anti-freeze, not much I add a gallon every couple months or so. Not much really. Well since this summer I have been adding water. Well we all know what happens next right. Yep my car radiator freezes. 1st I thought it was my heater core. Took hoses off ran water through and all went through fine. Next I replace my T-Stat. All good. then I get to my radiator. Frooze.

Well now I start taking it apart to get to the radiator I take off both hold downs. etc. to move it forward. Well to do this I had to move the large wire loom out of the way. Being cold it didnt really move well. But I got it propped over the radiator spout.

Now I get it all thawed out add anti-freeze start the car let her idle up bleed it out and go to put the cap back on couldnt get it on, wire loom was in the way, mind you car still running, so I move the loom out of the way and the car just shuts off, no warning what so ever notta, just cuts out. So I test all fuses good. Then I check spark good. I press the lil tab and I get fuel so that is ok, I tried the trick with the fp relay and notta. Now I am at a loss. I did notice that one pink wire in that loom had a tiny and I mean tiny bare spot that looked a lil corroded other then that nothing. I am at a loss. I have no tuner, or code reader LOL is there any way to see if it is my pcm? Or do you guys have any suggestions? I am open to all suggestions. I know I know this is all my OWN STUPIDITY that caused this but live and learn, and hopefully my stupidity will learn someone else. Thanks for listening to me rant a little bit about myself LMAO and I am open for suggestion thanks

I do recall after thinking about it, I was getting the low t-stat temp code, and while I had it started before it even warmed up the cooling fans were on.

I'd get that LIM gasket changed asap. I had a manifold leak on my 98 chevy 1500. Like You I'd have to top it off about every month and a half. Well after a while the coolant being sucked into the cylinders caused an intake valve to get gummy. Once the valve stem is gummy the valve stuck open, piston hit valve, valve is bent and wont seal. Backfiring destroyed the fuel spider. All in all that cheap part ended up costing me $1500 in parts and labor.

Well time for some more of my ignorance LMAO after buying a cheap code reader at wally world 60 bucks. And finding the code that I had before no other code at all. I was disgusted and discouraged, giving up getting ready to be raped by the stealership. As I was buttoning it back up my nieghbor comes over and askes what is goin on. Then he pulls of the fuse relay cover under the hood and pulls out a 10a fuse THAT WAS BLOWN. Low and behold what did this fuse go to, the fuel rail.

I know the day before I checked them or at least I thought I did. The way I checked them was with my fluke one end attatched to the ground then touching each side of the fuse while it was plugged in. Now either I missed it or missed something, because I replaced the fuse and Boom fires right up. Just goes to show everyone sometime a little thing overlooked can cause a hell of a lot of problems. So sometimes you need to sit back relax and slow down and do things right and careful.

I do hope that someone will learn from my story and don't go through this again.

Thanks to everyone for your inputs and even taking a look and thinking about it.

Glad to see you got her fixed...
and totaly agree sometimes it is the most likely that we tend to over look
that is the cause to the problem...
Thanks for the reminder...
John

Problem: Dead car, wont start
Summary: Performing maintenance on the car, specifically thawing out frozen radiator. In the process of performing this maintenance a wiring harness needed to be moved. Due to the cold, harness was not very flexible but workable.

In completion of the work, wiring harness was moved one last time at which point the engine shut off.

Checks:
Ignition system checked, spark good
Checked fuses, all checked out good
Fuel pressure checked, pressure good at Schrader valve
Fuel pump relay good

Fix:
10A Fuse protecting the fuel system found blown



I would do one other thing. The harness should not have transfered movement enough to the fuse box center to cause a short. Furthermore, all that movement during the time of pulling out and putting back in the radiator didnt cause any issues. It wasnt until, you stated, you pulled the harness back over the radiator cap if I understand correctly. So I would check that area of the harnes for anything that may be nicked or could have came in contact with ground. Its the only thing I can think of that could have blown the fuse. Something shorted out obviously. The fact you replaced the fuse and everything is running good now tells me it was a temporary short, which further tells me that something in the final act of moving that harness made a wire related to that fuse to short out.

Im going to mark this fixed and hopefully at some point we can get a troubleshooting database or area going where we can find information like this.

I taped the nicked wire all up and used liquid black tape on it. Thanks for all the tips and replies