I have a 2000 Camry that won't turn over. It's a 4 cylinder w/ 116k miles on it btw. I stay up on most routine maintenance like yearly tune ups and quarterly oil changes and I have had the car for 3 years and have never had any problems with it. I had a mechanic friend come take a look at it, he had all the tools and knowledge to check a lot of the basic stuff like that fuel was getting to the engine, there was compression in the engine, the spark plugs were firing, the starter was working, all the fuses worked, etc. He left telling me he though it might be a sensor which that stuff is beyond his ability.

Here's some more specific details about when it stopped working:

The problem occurred when I left work yesterday afternoon. I started up the car just fine (I also went to lunch and it ran just fine earlier in the day) and I put it in reverse and backed up a few feet and the car just died. I tried to turn it back on and it was trying to turn over but wouldn't turn on. I went to the office a few hours later and tried to start it and it started for about 5 seconds and sounded reasonably normal but then just died again. When I came back to the office today to meet my friend it didn't start at all but was still trying to turn over.

I noticed that when working on the car and trying to start it, the starting process kind of went through cycles of what I thought (and I don't know anything about cars) is a change in the compression. Also the first cylinder we did a compression test on had little to no compression at all. After going through the other 3 and coming back to the 1st one, the compression was there again. Maybe it's normal but my friend said it's impossible and that the compression tester wasn't on correctly the first time around but who knows. I just thought it might be relevant to any advice.

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to put as much information in there as possible. Before I dish out some money to a mechanic I wanted to go this route since I'm trying to save for a house and really don't want the extra bill. Maybe it's something simple or obvious?

 

When did you replace the timing belt in routine maintenance?