Hi, hope someone can help.Have a 98 neon, was running fine, till pulled battery to use in another neon. Just to give you more “fear” I’m a “shoe maker” son of a mechanic. Haven’t tried to till now and now I HAVE too. Also, guess I forgot how to hook up a battery. Don’t recall (decades ago) engineering idiots decided to “swap” posts on batteries. Again, I’m (overly) rusted, send “Mater”, maybe I just need a good “hook” up my axx to be towed to the … well … JK & fuming anyway. So, hooked up original battery backwards (some idiot tied black and red wires together?). Mind you, I’m dealing with sxxx that a Mickey Mouse madness mechanic “worked” on. Sorry to spew, hope it’s "entertaining to some degree.
Anyway, even after hooking the battery up correctly, it would start/run and such. Now, all of a sudden it just cranks but no start. Bloody fuel inject, otherwise I’d be poring “moonshine” (JK/sort of) into the carb. Just tired again, “almost” but not. Seems like it wants to but …
Sledgehammer, blowtorch? Otherwise, anyone have a “simple/easy” remedy. And no, sorry, can’t afford a mechanic, poor, broke and maybe soon homeless. Need this POS to run. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
My advice is to get wrid of this POS and find a more reliable piece of transportation"bicycle". I will gladly tow it for free to the nearest scrapyard.
I’m not sure what all can go wrong when a battery is connected backwards. I do know that it can’t be very good for some of the electronics. I would start checking every single fuse first and if the bloody thing still won’t start you will need to trace it back from the battery to the starter. Does everything seem to work, blower, radio, instrument lights, etc…?
If you do decide on moonshine, try Ole Smoky Apple Pie…not bad.
Well first thing is to narrow the possibilities by determining if it is spark or fuel. You don’t have a fuel pressure tester but do you hear the fuel pump run for a few seconds when you turn the key on? If not probably fuel pump. But yeah check all the fuses first. You can also try squirting a little starter fluid in the intake to see if you get a pop. If so you have spark and not fuel. To test for spark you can either use a tester or take a spark plug, attach one of the plug wires to it and ground it to metal on the engine. Activate the starter to see if there is spark.