mhorton

My wife's '93 Grand Am's SE (3.3L V6) latest problem is that it won't start intermittantly. Initially it seemed tempurature relaated, IE if it was hot and she drove it enough to get the engine to temp, let it sit 30 minutes or so, it wouldn't start, let it sit an hour and then it would. We had it "fixed" a couple times already, last time the ignition control module was replaced ($$$), it did better for a while, just long enough for there to be no warranty (6 months). Not its worse than ever, it won't start if its even slightly warm and hasn't been started for weeks, may not be temp related at all now, because I can try 15 minutes later and it runs fine.
I hooked a timing light to it, no spark on any wire. This car has the distributorless system, with 3 coils each firing a pair of cylinders. There are no codes in the ECU.

Any ideas, any tests I can do? I'm sick of spending money on this junk and want to fix it myself. As soon as it hit 75K, it started falling apart.

assh0l3

I would try the coil packs... Ive got an old ******* Z24 with a 2.8... it was doing the same thing and that was the fix

jinxy

probably the coils or the crank posistion sensor or something. those 3100's are ------- pieces of ----.

stillnoturbo

I never knew people fixed those. I just thought when they broke people just junk them since I see so many of them at the junkyard.

mhorton

This ones a 3300, but yeah...

Thanks for the replies, I'll try the crank sensor first.
I would love to see this thing in the junk yard, but my wife likes it for some reason, and we can't afford a new car at the moment.

jinxy

i didnt think they put 33's in anything but gt's. My first car was a 94 grandam se and it was a 3100

stillnoturbo

Right off the bat when I started going out with my wife and she got her license I told never to buy a grand am or any pontiac and she asked why. I said just go to any dealership and she the resale value on them or look at the majority of cars on the side of the road. Well atleast in my neck of the woods. Her first car she bought was a corolla and then a mazda and now the Focus. She did her research first on what years not to buy for them and just bought a brand new one back in 03. Little small things like leaky window seal and non mechanics things that were recalls were the only problems she had but nothing were the car ever broke down. I have to say as much as I hate american cars it's been a good buy on the reliability of it. If she would ever buy a pontiac or chevy or dodge or anything I'd divorce her and she said she'd kill herself first before I got a chance if she had to get any of those. lol. I trained her well. Oh and she cooks good too.

JonDouglas

3300 is the baby 3800. Most likely the crank ar amshaft position sensor.

Canned Hams suck. I used to work at a GM dealership. Everytime I saw one that was more than 3-4 years old it was a pile of ----. A little tip for ya. If that thing hasen't had the timing chain replaced and it has more than 100K on it then it's a ticking time bomb. I am not sure if the later 3300 has a Nylon cam gear or not, but if they do then it is more than likely tready to shred the teeth off.

mhorton

Its at about 90k now. Great, I guess that will be the next repair I have to do. I hate working on that car. People complaint about Hondas being hard to work on because they're so compact, but everything I've tried to do on this has been twice as hard. Just changing the spark plugs was an ordeal.

She bought this car new long before I met her (or I would have talked her out of it), I think the only problem she had under warranty was the transmission went out. Then it hit 75k and became a money pit. Started leaking tranny fluid, thermostat went bad, window crank stripped, power lock lever sticks, have to fix the AC twice, had a gas leak (injector? can't remember now), lock up solinoid went bad, water pump, motor mount, this is the 3rd round of the no-start problem...
Every time it breaks we have the same conversation... Its cheaper to fix this one problem for $200-300 than to buy another car, but I say thats true until the next thing breaks... But we always do wind up fixing it. When something major goes bad (IE, have to replace motor, tranny, etc) I will refuse to fix it.