I have a 1994 buick century that started to sputter really bad on a half hour trip away. It felt as if one of the coil packs went bad, and was running on 4/6 cyl. All of a sudden, it sputtered out and died. Tried to throw it in neutral and crank it again, but it wouldn’t fire. Almost like low fuel pressure, but I swear I smelled fuel out of the exhaust. I’ve recently replaced the ICM, and the wire that signals the ICM from the 3x crank sensor. Also noticed a vac line that goes from the bottom of the throttle body to the rear valve cover came off, so I put that back on and it did nothing. Was also looking at a throttle position sensor, as I unplugged it and it didn’t seem to change the amount of throttle response at all, it was still terrible and running on half the engine. When it cranks, it kinda fires off and on, like it really wants to start but can’t. I’ve verified strong spark by shocking the holy cow out of myself taking the plugs off the coils, but I didn’t have good diag tools (like fuel pressure tester or scanner) with me at the moment. Just poking my head around, seeing if anyone is a century wizard and has a fix for this problem before I head 30 miles out to diag this POS on the side of the road.
94 Century?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the timing chain gave up the ghost.
Tester
The one drawback isn’t really bad. The parts to fix it may cost more than a car that runs. A new timing chain installed could buy three 1994 cars. Economics might favor the old auto shop insult: Jack up the radiator cap and put a new car under it. Sorry for the bean counter advice.
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