I'm having a little trouble with my car. It is a 1987 Oldsmobile Delta 88. It has the LG3 3.8 Litre V6 engine. I have had the car for about four years.

About a year ago I had some trouble with it not starting. It would crank and backfire/cough. When it did this it required more attempts to start than the battery could do, so would require that it be jumpstarted. It then came good and ran fine until mid spring. Then one day it would not start after I turned it off. I tried boosting it and still it did not start. I did have spark and there was definitely fuel (spark plugs were wet). It turns out that the ignition control module (LX338) was bad. I had a spare one that I had picked up at the local pick n' pull, and swapping that in solved all the problems.

Two weeks ago I had some trouble with the car starting. This was caused by the side posts on the battery being worn down and not making contact. Top post to side post adapters fixed this.

Last Thursday I was driving into work (about thirty minutes on the highway), and the engine died. There were no sounds of destruction or any misfiring, it just stopped. I was able to pull it off to the side no problem and tried to start the car again, but it just wouldn't start. So I sat in -20C for two hours waiting for the tow truck.

I managed to get the car into my father's garage and since the battery was starting to go down from starting attempts and having the hazard lights going for a couple hours I put my battery charger on it. After work that day I tried to start it again. I can confirm that I have spark (though I can't confirm timing as this particular ignition system has not timing marks). And again the spark plugs are wet with gas. I bought a brand new LX338 ignition module and coils thinking that this was the same problem I had before. This made absolutely no difference.

So I definitely have fuel being injected. I have spark, but again I can't easily determine if the timing is correct.

The ignition system on this car seems a bit oddball, and there doesn't seem to be too much documentation on it. The crank shaft has three "blades" on it that pass a hall sensor for engine RPM and ignition events. The camshaft has a single trigger for a hall sensor and the LX338 then determines engine RPM and position from these sensors. It then feeds RPM and position information to the ECU and the ECU sends back timing corrections. The only thing I can think of is that the camshaft position sensor isn't triggering in the correct position. I have started to pull apart the engine to take a look at this, but I haven't made that much progress yet. I have only made it as taking the water pump off.

Before I get too far into stripping things down I was wondering if someone might have an idea as to why my car won't start or has seen something like this before?

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Kevin

I would go borrow a compression tester and check if you're getting any compression. My camshaft gear teeth wore down from wear and age, so my cam wouldn't turn when cranking, so no compression.