oh yeah, and it died at idel right after strying to leave the stop sign.

 

The timing light has it's own battery power. As long as there is enough inductive voltage ona plug wire you will get a good light. It will not tell you there is enough voltage to produce a goodspark. The FSM does not give a coil voltage spec. You should get 30,000 volts + to the plug. Resistance in the circuit lowers that voltage, bad wire, bad cap, plug etc. The FSM onlygives procedure to check spark or no spark, not weak spark. I have an inductive digital tester that I can lay across a plug wire which will tell me the kv's going down that wire. I mostly bought it to test my distributorless ignition on my truck, but it's a handy quick tester for any system. I can test my own car tonight as I just installed all new cap, plugs, wires and let you know how many volts mine produces. Youdon't need a tester though. Just remove the spark plugs then hook up one plug to one plug wire, groundthat plug and have someone turn the engine over, if you see a good blue spark, you're good to go. Don't turn it over too long. You can do this for each plug/wire. If you are getting good spark at the correct timing then it's probably fuel. I thought you said you tested for fuel?

I think you need to first bring this spark/no spark issue to rest. It's the easiest to test and will give you a direction to go afterward.

 

Yeah, your right. but its been kinda hard to pin anything down on this thing. that would be great if you could give me a figure for your properly working ignition. Its just kinda hard to look somethig up or get some info off of the net and then go test it as the car is parked 35 miles away. But this weekend I will for sure determin... timing belt, cam and disty allignment again, I will pull the plugs to make sure I have fuel in the cylinder as the rest of the fuel system works fine, voltage to the injectors pending the last test and then take a good look at the spark. I did this test earlier but only to determin that I have spark, now I just need to for sure find out that it is strong enough. why do you suggest not cranking the engine for long other than the obvious reason of the battery dieing. actually this batt has been cranking this car over for so long without dieing that Im starting to wonder if there is no compression. need a new fitting to do that test too. any other suggestions as I will be working on the car again saturday.

 

You'll just flood it. You don't need many cranks to see a good spark. I actually tested my own Camry with my Kv tester. Voltage came in at 12.5Kv to 15.5Kv on the plug wires. Not as high as I'd expected but then I did some thinking and research and figured the voltage is not even throughout the spark cycle. The voltage should build to that needed to jump the plug gap then fall as it needs less voltage once started. I think with a scope you would see the spike and fall off over the spark duration.But everything happens so fast you'd need ascope that captured the spark cycle thenbe able to display it. My tester is probably capturing the average between highand low as it takes a few seconds to give one single reading. All references on the web use the 30Kv + figure as an accepted value without qualifying the number. From the coil I don't know what's lost in the rotor, cap. My Ford Ranger with distributorless ignition came in with values a little higher - 18.5Kv to 20.5Kv. That may reflect the losses through the rotor/cap.

If your timing belt is OK and everything turning I don't know why no compression at this point. But knowing it's there would be good.



Maybe toyoboy can give some insight.

 

If your car is equipped with a crank and cam sensor then what it could be is the cam sensor which the engine uses to determine when to send the injector pulse signals. if that sensor went bad which is real comon on camrys then the fuel pressure will be there but the fuel injectors wont be opening to allow fuel into the head. however you said you tried spraying starter fluid and had no change so I would doubt that.

I would also doubt the compression becuase if it went from running fine one sec. to not running the next then its most likely something electrical like a sensor or a bad coil. I had to replace the coil on my 93 at about 170k miles.

 

turboxb9s, 95 4 cyl'dr does not have crank or cam position sensor. But you bring up a good point about the injectors not firing. As you say though even starting fluid didn't produce a burp which led me to spark as well.

deanp, have you given it gas pedal when trying to start it? Using a stethescope to hear the clicking of the injectors will also prove out injector operation. If no stethescope then I'm not sure if using your fingers would give operation feedback. Maybe a lenth of vacuum tubing held to the ear would also work.

 

I didnt figure cam or crank sensor because on my last ford, it canceled spark if it failed, and since I had spark I figured it was fine. I also saw that the haynes manual said cam and crank sensor dont apply for the I4 like you said pedro. So how does this car make up for not having either of these sensors?

I originally doubted compression too but im running out of ideas so Im not rueling anything out. thats why Im taking off the timing cover AGAIN. not that hard but not fun either.

Turboxb what indication did you get that you had to change your coil. Mine checked out fine with the resistance test.

I have given it the gas pedal when trying to start it. I have also listened to the injectors and heard clicking with the stethiscope, so Im pretty sure they are being told to open, but to make sure, Im gonna check electricity going to them and pull the plugs to determin once and for all if I have fuel getting into the cylinder.

 

The old fashion way - with mechanical timing and a distributor.

Being hot might make it go bad. From my previous post there were higher resistance values when hot.

 

I believe my coil didn't have the resistance it should have had but what led me to testing it was that I did a spark test by unplugging a wire and connecting it to a spark testing tool and saw that I had none.

pedro. if the camry doesn't have either cam or crank sensors then how does the computer determine when to pulse the injectors. I'm guessing the 95 has a distributor so it wouldn't need it for the spark. What I'm thinking is that there is a sensor in the distributor that does this. If the distributor runs off the camshaft then that would be called the cam sensor by all of the guys I work with.

 

turboxb9s, the 5S-FE non-California has two signal rotors inside the distributor. One has four lobes the other has one lobe. So I would guess that the one lobe rotor is for TDC while the four lobe is for firing of each cylinder through the ECM and ignitor. Someone with indepth knowledge of this could clarify.There is no separate cam/crank positon sensor as is the case on the distributorless V6 engines. The California version 4 cyl'd has a multi-lobe signal rotor without separate cam/crank position sensors.So I guess you could say that the one lobesignal rotor is the camshaft position sensor for TDC, it's just not commonly referred to assuch.The only function test for this is the ohm test on the pick-upcoil in my earlier post. Now how specifically the ECM uses the signals from the distributor to fire the injectors I'll leave tosomeone else as there are other sensors in play.