My 2003 cargo van just quit while I was driving, scary! I coast to the side and and after 7-days mechanic still can’t get it started. It has 55k miles, garage kept. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Dodge said there was no recall parts on the year/model.
Has your mechanic pulled any diagnostic codes?
What has he tried so far?
fuel pump failure, fuel pump relay, crankshaft or cam position sensor failure, ignition switch, plus many other possibilities…
Does it have fuel pressure, compression and or spark???
Any hard or pending codes?? Same as Purebreds post…
After 7 days your mechanic is either very very busy and hasn’t spent much time looking at it or he/she is not very competent and or doesn’t know how to run diags or have the right equipment to do the diag…
I could see it taking a long time if it was an intermittent issue, but if it is cranking and no start that should be easier to find the problem… But then again sometimes they just eat your lunch… lol
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If the engine cranks ok – that rrr rrr rrr sound with key in “start” – first step is to determine if the problem is spark or fuel . For example, if starter fluid is sprayed into the throttle body air intake, and the it starts & runs briefly, then stalls, problem is likely in the fuel system.
Another idea: Stalls that occur during high speed freeway driving are often caused by a problematic fuel pump or fuel pump relay. If you want to replace something on a hope, you could try replacing the fuel pump relay.
It’s a bit of a puzzle why a pro mechanic can’t either get it started or at least determine the cause. One cause for the hard to diagnose nature of the problem might be that the problem is neither spark or fuel. It could be compression problem for example. First step for that is to make sure the camshaft is turning during cranking. The camshaft can often be seen through the hole where you fill the engine w/ oil. Wear eye protection of course.
So many possibilities in a 21-year-old vehicle.
The first thing I suspect when someone makes that statement is a bad crank sensor.
I would have a bushel basket full of these things, if I would have kept each one that failed over the years.
One reason some mechanics have a hard time diagnosing it when one of these fails is, it rarely turns on a Check Engine light on when it does.
Tester
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