HELP! 89 subaru EA82 SPFI will not start.

[ferp420]

10 hours ago, Ionstorm66 said:

If you keep trying to crank it with the loose ground, it will burn up the transistor. 

i have a ground wire conected to it so i never had that problem ill have to take your word for it

[azdave]

On 7/22/2022 at 3:47 PM, el_freddo said:

Why are we diagnosing a spark issue when Heater states the engine will run when fuel is poured down the throttle body?  

 

It's Heater's fault. He asked a secondary question about if it was possible to get the distributor to talk to the coil without using the ECU. 

[Heater]

Well not the coil, the injector. However about a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine educated me on how fuel injection works. In theory I thought I had solid ground. However my theorys are usually flawed and nothing more than a stupid idea. So yes the ecu has given up the ghost. At this point prolly junk the motor and ecu system. Maybe the entire interior and turn it into a Baja racer lol. Thanks guys for the help and constructive criticism. 

[Ionstorm66]

5 hours ago, Heater said:

Well not the coil, the injector. However about a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine educated me on how fuel injection works. In theory I thought I had solid ground. However my theorys are usually flawed and nothing more than a stupid idea. So yes the ecu has given up the ghost. At this point prolly junk the motor and ecu system. Maybe the entire interior and turn it into a Baja racer lol. Thanks guys for the help and constructive criticism. 

If you need an ECU let me know, I think I have a manual spfi spare.

[scoobydube]

Single defective items that can by themselves keep the engine from starting and has put thousands of Subarus in junk yards:

1. the black fusible link is the main engine but any of them can start to break or get hard and brittle, causing intermittent and then total failure.

2.  the thing a ma jig that bolts to the body, directly behind the fusible link box, that had one wire to the coil and the long black wire running to left side engine attachment next to the battery, where the ground wire attaches.  The thing a ma jig also keeps static off of your radio and right before it blows, you get a lot of radio static.

3. the main engine ground wire get brittle and loses most of it's ability to conduct electricity and ground out the engine, at it's attachment to the frame.  This single defect will cause the engine to run poorly when you operate any other accessory on the vehicle.  For instance, you can almost kill the engine by operating your electric windows, if you have them.  THIS IS THE MOST PROBABLE CAUSE OF YOUR PROGRESSIVE FAILURE.  These wires may not last more that 250,000 miles.

4. a loose wire inside of the distributor cap

5. the short wire between the Positive battery terminal and the fusible link box, gets hard at the terminal end, brittle and loses most if not all of it's ability to conduct electricity, causing poor performance before a total engine failure.  You splice in a new lead to the battery terminal, by splaying both ends of the two wire ends that you are joining, in order to get the maximum about of contact surface.

6. the distributor electronics just suddenly went out.

7. the hot wire that runs into the back of the alternator, gets brittle, hard and breaks, causing the engine to perform poorly before it suddenly fails.

8. bad plugs will cause your alternator to fail prematurely.  Some plugs require replacement every 15,000 miles.

9. coil failure or corrosion inside of the lead wire from the coil to the distributor.

10.  Bonus:  a failure of the replaceable round switch below the dash board, to the left of the steering column, will cause the interior fan to suddenly fail, especially if you had just been running it at it's maximum speed.  There are about 5 of these identical switches below that dash in the same location so you are going to have to get a known good switch and plug it into each switch socket, one at a time, before you find the burned out one.  There may be black discoloration on the burned out one.

[Heater]

On 8/13/2022 at 7:44 PM, Ionstorm66 said:

If you need an ECU let me know, I think I have a manual spfi spare.

How much. I am interested