My car won’t start!

I have a 2011 Chevrolet Impala I was making my way to my buddies house and out of no where my car stops working, the car cranks but it just won’t start I hooked up my code scanner and no codes are coming on what could it be?

With no codes, I’d suspect the fuel pump. You can usually hear the fuel pump when you first turn the key forward. So try that. Turn the key forward, but don’t start the car. Listen beside the gas tank. You should hear a buzzing sound if the fuel pump is functioning. It might be best to have someone else turn the key so you can be down by the fuel tank listening. If you hear absolutely nothing, the fuel pump or it’s relay (if you’re lucky) have most likely failed. Sometimes you can bang on the tank and the fuel pump will start working for a short while before it completely dies for good.

Depends on how the vehicle died… Did it stop running while you were driving it? How it died helps ID where to start looking.

If you have no codes and you can verify the engine computer still functions and is not dead…then I would follow @Scrapyard_John has outlined. You can sit in the vehicle to listen for the fuel pump prime…it should run for a few seconds and then stop to wait for the tach signal to then continue pumping.

Check your fuel pump fuses and relays in the fuse panel…in fact check all your fuses as some other subsystem may have taken out the fuel system etc… Your vehicle also uses the same relays as other systems, so you may be able to swap the fuel pump relay with say the horn relay as a quick test.

You can also pull the fuel pump relay and probe the terminals to see what is happening and or run the fuel pump as a test by bypassing the relay for test purposes…

Let’s go back to fundamentals, like we did before OBD II and codes. To run, you need four things:

  • Fuel
  • Air
  • Compression
  • Spark

Crank it a bit, then remove a spark plug and see if the end is wet. That will tell if you have fuel or not. Alternatively, spray throttle-body cleaner into the throttle body while someone cranks the engine., It if starts and runs while you do this, fuel is the issue.

Air is unlikely to be the problem, but you could remove the air filter and see if it’s completely clogged. If it were the issue, slapping it against the workbench a few times would remove enough blockage to get the engine to run.

Remove all the plugs and test the compression at all cylinders, one at a time, by using a compression tester and cranking the engine with wide-open throttle. Among other things, this would identify things like a failed timing belt/chain. All cylinders should be within 10-15 pounds of each other.

Plug a spark plug into its cable while it is removed from the engine. Make sure its shell is resting on the metal block or exhaust manifold. Have someone crank the engine. You should see blue spark across the spark plug tip.

This should give you something to go on.

Yeah I agree if you want to check a few things but I have never been able to resolve the problem myself when a car just stalled. So I just called a tow truck to take it to a shop to figure it out. You do have plenty of gas though right?

These have included: timing chain, fuel pump more than twice, fuel pump connector, crank sensor twice, ignition fuse, and there may have been more times that I don’t recall but have tried to forget.

It could be a lot of things. You need the basic no-start diagnosis. Ask you shop to start by checking for a good healthy visible spark at a spark plug during cranking. If that’s ok, next measure the fuel rail pressure.