95 BUICK PARK AVE not running HELP symptoms inside

Hello,
Let me start by saying, my grandfather took great care of this car.
About 4 months ago I was on my way home from a trip and my serpentine belt broke due to a bad tensioner pulley. So I drove it about a mile with no pulley attached. Then had it towed to a local Pep Boys and had them replace the pulley and serpentine belt.

I got in the the car and began to drive and notice that the AC digits were blinking on the dash and AC was not quite working right.

Also, the car was not shifting right. It was shifting very slowly and had a loss of power. BUT, sometimes it had plenty of power.

This problem got worse over weeks of driving. But sometimes it would run fine. Intermittent problem.

When trying to accelerate on the freeway I would have to to push on the throttle all the way and it was still terrible even jerky. Would be run rough and jerky. But then sometimes it would be fine the next time I started it up.

Then one day I ran the car with loss of power to work and shut it off. Had to move car and would not start because it seemed very hot. Let it cool down and it started slugishly. Ran fine later that night on the way home.

Long thread I know(sorry)

Car ran much worse when the AC was on. So i ran the car for several weeks without AC. When I did turn the (blinking) ac back on the car would sputter and cough and backfire and barley run. So i ran it again with all the symptoms above without the ac.

Long story short, the car stopped running. Won't even start now.
Checked spark by holding spark plug to a metal ground and spark is orange. I smell some fuel and also tried squirting starting fluid into intake. Still no starting.

Please someone help. I have no money to have it towed to shop and have it coded.

HELP.. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

The problem you are having with the AC digits blinking is usually caused when battery is disconnected with the air conditioner operational. The air mixture door gets out of sync with the computer. The fix involves removing the glove box and resetting the position of the door. If you search the forum you should find a detailed explanation about how to fix it. Of course, getting the glove box out may seem daunting at this stage, but it's really quite simple.

There are some active threads about PA's that won't start or die while running and much of what you need to do is covered in them. This can be a long process of trial and error. So be patient. Help is on the way.

Searching through this forum is a great place to start on your repair...take some time and read over what others have experienced. As you probably know, it just about has to boil down to fuel-air-spark-timing. There may be some codes stored that can point you in the right direction. There's a way to do this using a paper clip and is documented here in the forums and probably all over the Internet.

Checking for codes is probably the best way to start. Please post what you find out. Sorry, I got to go eat dinner.

Good Luck!

While the AC sounds like the least of your problems, depending on your definition of "blinking" you might see this thread:
http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=919111 (http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=919111)

Also, I had my tensioner break when driving down the road a month or two ago in m 99 PAU, one belt got the other, and I ended up having to get both pulleys and both belts replaced. I knew the sound when it happened, though(strange that no warning lights come on at all, one would think a alternator light would still be common place), so I pulled over immediately and didn't incur additional damage.

My first car was a 66 El Camino, and the belt came off on it, but I didn't see the light. This caused it to overheat and burn a valve, which lead to it running awful, and forced me to use some elbow grease and learn a bit about cars, but it was pretty obvious it had overheated since steam was coming out from under the hood (why I pulled over in that case and how I knew better with the PAU).

Hopefully you haven't burnt a valve, and hopefully continuing to drive the car with the problems you mention didn't cause more trouble and the fact that it got worse and worse was coincidental. As the previous poster mentioned, you might look at current threads, and you will probably get some responses from some more knowledgeable members soon. You might also do some searching (I mention this in case you didn't notice that the search button is made available after you register and sign in).

Thanks for your help so far everyone.

Ok, so I went down and got new coils and control ignition module.
Installed and still same thing.

Car won't start. So, here I am after $250 spent on those items and no start.

I have read about Cam shaft sensor and or crankshaft sensor. I think that is right????? Anyway there are two different sensors and I can't remember if one of them will cause a car not to start at all.

Please help me out here. I need my car to run.

Oh yes, I did spray starting fluid into the intake manifold and it doesn't even fire at all.

Please don't tell me that I should check spark plug wires or spark plugs because even if I'm getting spark to one or two cylinders, I should still be hearing the car trying to start. I get nothing. PLEASE help.

Any ideas. I have heard that even if the crankshaft sensor is bad it should still run but not well. So what can it be?? am I wrong about this. Is it the other sensor? Thanks again for all your help people.

Orange spark is usually too weak to fire off a mixture., how do you expect to proceed with no diagnostics, a scanner will tell you if you have cranking rpms, if none suspect the crank sensor or the wiring from the cps to the icm. You now have spent $ with no results, had a pro checked this out it would have been cheaper than random parts replacement, sorry about the lecture, but this is a daily occurence in my shop. Any advice we give you is also guess, without onsite diagnostics it is impossible to pinpoint the problem.

Wow - you spent $250 but don't want to look at the spark plugs?

I have read about Cam shaft sensor and or crankshaft sensor. I think that is right????? Anyway there are two different sensors and I can't remember if one of them will cause a car not to start at all.
In addition to the other fine advice, typically when a serpentine belt self-destructs, the fiber windings will wrap around the harmonic balancer and wipe out the CKPS, or wiring/terminal. That should have been the first thing checked. The loss of the crank sensor (CKPS) signal will cause the symptoms you describe, the cam sensor will not. :shakehead

Right on, thanks, I will check CKPS(crankshaft sensor) terminals.

In response to the parts that I bought. To my uneducated Buick Park Ave mind, it seemed the most plausible that the Ignition module and maybe the coils were bad.

Yes I spent gobs ($250) on these parts. But damn here I am trying to work on a car that has so many computer components that I am dumbfounded.

I am an experienced home brewed mechanic who learns by getting his hands dirty and sometimes bloody working on my own stuff. But, I can't believe all the BULL s..... they put on this car. LOL. But from what I hear GM was the company to create the car computer and all the workings within and these were the guinea pig cars.

Anyway, going to have to check the CKPS to see if that is the problem.

Thanks.

Ok took a look at wiring down by harmonic balancer and wow what a mess. I don't know what all the plugs go to but some were melted or grounded out on each other.

There is a plug/connector with 4 wires going into it that has bare wire to all four right into connector.

Another connector that has two wires that were grounded out together because of melted shielding.

No burnt wire though. Just the plastic around wires had to get really hot from engine overheating?

I guess car got really hot because there is some melted plastic(wire protector) that has dripped down in certain parts.

Anyway fixing wires right now and thought I would write in the forum about it.