240sx frustration. Won't Start

[Limey92]

Hey guys, so I am buying a KA24DE '91 240sx from a friend of mine, its a project car. It was a daily driver for him and hi family for 6 years. about three months ago it died. Alternator died, apparently. Due to this issue it sat in his driveway for three months. Dead battery and all. The past few days we have replaced the alternator, and the starter. everything that has been replaced previously can probably be eliminated because it worked before the alternator died...

After we replaced the alternator and hooked up jumper cables... nothing
we replaced the starter... charged the battery and... click... car turns over, can see the belt moving and all but no start.

We took the battery to walmart had them drain it/charge it and test it. said its fine.

I don't know what it could be. A friend of mine said we should spray some throttle body/air filter cleaner in it and try again with a charged battery. and ill be trying that tomorrow.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[hollerjeet]

Hey guys, so I am buying a KA24DE '91 240sx from a friend of mine, its a project car. It was a daily driver for him and hi family for 6 years. about three months ago it died. Alternator died, apparently. Due to this issue it sat in his driveway for three months. Dead battery and all. The past few days we have replaced the alternator, and the starter. everything that has been replaced previously can probably be eliminated because it worked before the alternator died...

After we replaced the alternator and hooked up jumper cables... nothing
we replaced the starter... charged the battery and... click... car turns over, can see the belt moving and all but no start.

We took the battery to walmart had them drain it/charge it and test it. said its fine.

I don't know what it could be. A friend of mine said we should spray some throttle body/air filter cleaner in it and try again with a charged battery. and ill be trying that tomorrow.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

welcome!

ok, make sure your battery terminals are good!.. i cant stress this enough.

second. you said it turns over and over and over but wont start correct?

all you need for a motor to run is: compression, fuel and spark.

do a compression test to make sure all cylinders have good compression.

next you need to check for spark, as your cranking the car, one by one, pull a spark plug out and ground it to see if it sparking. if they all spark and it has compression, you know its not getting fuel.

for fuel, make sure you hear your pump priming. if you can take the rail off and see if injectors are spitting fuel that would be best, im sure there is other methods you can use like testing the impedience etc. just search for it..

if you checked all these things and still a no go. then your timing must be off. search to find info on how to set timing properly.

im assuming since it was running and then parked for a while mice got into it and messed some wires up. idk.. follow the steps i out lined for you and you'll be fine. everything i told you to do is easily searchable.. you need to learn how to search. most people are not as nice as i am and will rip you a new one, since your new, ill help you out. goodluck, and if you still got questions post them

[Limey92]

How do I check whether the terminals are good? They Re clean and the leads are connected really tight. The fuel pump is new. And when there is a charged battery I can hear it priming. And can I perform a compression test or do I havw to tow the car some where?

[stigo]

Maybe the distributor is bad? The terminals are good if they dont have build up and the wire connected to it are nice and thick. To me, it sounds like your getting fuel and i doubt your injectors are bad. I highly doubt the compression is bad so i would definitely check spark first. GL

[DILLONDILLONDILLON!]

i know it sounds dumb but also since the cars been sitting you should get rid of the old gasoline in the tank and make sure their is fuel lol. try to do a compression test on the vehicle . its fairly simple to do it yourself, you should check spark first since its alil easier to check and then compression test after and then cylinder leak down test. we use to use a jumper in school to test spark plug to to see if we had good spark. replacing the cap and rotor is a cheap repair as well that can help your issue also the plug wires should have about 7k ohms of resistance per foot of wire that being said if you have a DMM that reads ohms you can check it or just replace the wires like most people do lol.also check your ignitor if thats bad you wont be getting any spark at all from your primary and their wont be any secondary voltage if that all checks out and the vehicle still doesnt start check compression.

[eek]

-Double check all your connections since you did work on the car recently (make sure all the terminals are connected to the alternator, starter, etc).
-Did you check all the fuses? Maybe you popped a fuse while installing the new starter/alternator/battery?
-Does he have a car alarm? If so, make sure its off (un-armed) before trying to start the car.
-Check the spark plugs and spark plug wires make sure they are plugged into the distributor.

If the car was running and only sat for 3 months, I doubt it be fuel or compression but who knows. Start with the easy stuff then move on to more complex.

[hollerjeet]

How do I check whether the terminals are good? They Re clean and the leads are connected really tight. The fuel pump is new. And when there is a charged battery I can hear it priming. And can I perform a compression test or do I havw to tow the car some where?

ok so terminal and leads are good. thats good.. you can hear the pump priming.. thats good.

you can go to autozone or oriellys and rent a compression tester. its really easy to do, you just pop out the spark plug, thread in the tester, make sure you remove the fuse for the fuel pump so the car does start. crank the car over for a couple of seconds and see what the gauge reads. it should be in the 150-180psi range ( all of them). its very very easy to do.

you need to check if your getting spark its very important and also easy to do. we cant help you unless you start diagnosing the car and reporting back

google how to test for spark
google how to compression test
google how to.. you get the point.

[Limey92]

I just wanted to let everybody who helped me know, that i got the beast running. Once the fuel built up in the lines and some throttle body cleaner was used, it started up from a push start. Walmart lied, there was a bad cell in my battery, but i got it sorted. thanks guys