GT not turning over?? Options

[uberschall]

about a year ago, i had an issue with my ever-trusty '95 hatch not starting. it happened in the parking lot of my old apartment, and after a few days of dead-ending diagnostics, it turned out that the main on the distributor had melted somehow and the issue was fixed.

nothing major happened in between.

now it's stopped running again, but this time it's worse - my girlfriend and i were on our way to catch a train to chicago for new years and the car died - of all places, on the way. fortunately we managed to cover the remaining ground on foot, and the train was running late.

i noticed a few blocks earlier that the idle was dropping at stoplights. it stalled once, and after a few unsuccessful cranks, it turned over and i was able to make it a couple more intersections by keeping the revs higher...before it died again, anyway. after a few more cranks the battery started to give up and i managed to push it into a nearby lot and decided to deal with it when i returned.

so far, i have had the alternator tested (3 times to be sure - it passed), replaced the battery and the battery negative cables (i damaged the old battery trying to get the corroded negative terminal off before i even started working, and the cables looked pretty bad), and also the distributor cap and rotor.

the car is still only cranking and not even attempting to turn over.

i still haven't been able to actually check for spark (i've been working alone) but when i pulled the cap, there was a little oil inside which told me i should replace the thing anyway.

i know i should check the following:

-that i am actually getting spark (which would narrow it down to the coil or ?)
-if i am, i need to check that i'm getting fuel (if i'm getting both...then what?)

sooo....i am hoping someone can tell me if there is anything else i should look into. the car wasn't exhibiting any symptoms before the day it died on me.

i can't go very long without it, but i can't really afford to put it in the shop just yet.

thanks so much for reading.

[silver6gc]

If you have oil in the distributor, replace it to start with. Listening for the fuel pump will tell you if the pump is working, it won't tell you if you're getting good fuel pressure INTO or even AT the engine, you can disconnect the fuel line from top of the fuel filter and turn the key on while somebody is watching for good fuel flow coming out of the filter, this is easy to do and will let you know that the pump is good AND the filter is not clogged. The ECM fires the injectors based on the NE+ signal from the pickup coil in the distributor, if you have or can get your hands on a noid lite then you could check to see if the ECM is firing them or not. If you have oil in the distributor then the pickup coil could be bad from oil conamination. Most of the possible causes for your issues are related to the distributor, and they are known to go bad on 5S-FE's all the time.

This post has been edited by silver6gc: Jan 9, 2009 - 12:25 AM