1992 Olds 88 Dead after attempted jump start.

Hello all-

I have a 1992 Olds 88, it has 250,000 mi. on it with the 3.8 Liter. We left the car at the airport for 3 days with the dome light on, obviously the battery went dead. We attempted a jump start, the car will turn over strong but shows no signs at all of wanting to start. The car was running perfect when we parked it 3 days before. This has got me confused, I have been working and haven't had time to check for spark or fuel pressure but will do that on Monday. My main concern is that something may have happened in the jump starting process. The airport operations guy had jumper cables that were truck mounted and hooked to a generator. I had left the key in the ignition in the accessory position because I had been trying to start it, that was my mistake. When he hooked up the cables I saw all the interior light flashing on and off as he was making the connection, it took me a minute to get the key to the off position and I'm afraid a power spike may have done some damage to the ECM or at least burned a fuse. All the interior and dash lights seem to be fine but I am not hearing the fuel pump when I first turn the ignition on. Any ideas about what may have happened? Thanks

if you live on ther coast check for any moisture built up on electrical stuff
that happened to me in vancouver bc a few years ago

Well Raybo100 I live in Utah but the moisture is certainly a possibility I will keep an eye out for it, this has been a very heavy winter. I have an update, I discovered that there is no spark but there is fuel pressure. At least enough fuel to spray a light mist out of an open spark plug hole when I turn the engine over. I checked every fuse I could locate including the ones on the drivers side under the dash and the ones on the passenger side by the ECM and the ones under the hood on the firewall near the windshield, that is all of them that I know of if anybody knows of any other locations let me know. I tested the coil with my multimeter. The primary terminals check out o.k. but the secondary terminals are reading 12,000 t 13,000 ohms and the chilton says they should be falling between 5,000 and 8,000 ohms. I don't know enough about electricity to know if this would be a big enough problem to make the car not spark at all or if it just means the coils need to be replaced soon. The coil pack is only about 2 years old. I also went to the junk yard and picked up an ECM out of a 1992 Olds 98 that looked like it had the exact same engine and all. I plugged it in but there was no change at all. One other note, I was talking to my wife yesterday and she believes that she saw the guy that was helping us jump the car reverse the polarities for a second while he was hooking the cables up. This makes a lot more sense to me as to why my car is dead. Any suggestions on where to go from here. Thanks

Just wondering if you ever got this figured out. I'm have very similar problems with my '91 Park Ave. See my post: "91 Park Ave. Won't Start After Reverse Jump Connection." Thanks!

timrice-

I did get it figured out, and I'm sorry I didn't post a follow up. After all my tinkering it turned out to be the ignition control module. On my vehicle, which is probably very similar to yours, this is the flat piece that the coil pack bolts to. If this is the culprit on your car it will be a pretty simple job. Just remove the bolts from the coil that connect to the ICM. Keep track of what wires connect to where on the back of the coil, its easy to mix them up and they all have identical connectors. Remove the 3 bolts that connect the ICM to the engine. Disconnect the wide electrical connector that has a bunch of wires. Swap out the ECM, put it back together and hopefully you will be in business! If I remember right the ECM new is about $100 or you could probably find one cheap at a junk yard, I just didn't have time to go that route. Good luck, hopefully that helps.

Thanks for the feedback. Since the matter has come to a resolution and due to the age of the thread this thread has been closed.