jgray93ls

Hi Craig, Almost 5 years, any update on what happened? I've spent dozens of hours over the last year or two trying to fix various issues in my 93 LS. Some of which are quite similar to yours. Thanks

Jaswood, 'Thomas', I don't recall if my CEL came on then, but here's another related issue that may help some looking here. Just a few weeks after my post, my wife calls to tell the car is acting up, no power, thankfully only a block or two from home, but barely made it up our fairly steep side road. I get home from work and check it out. Acted just like before so I do the 'coil test' i mentioned before and, sure enough, with the coil removed from the driver's side coil it still runs the same, when removed from the top coil it won't start. I replaced the coil and....no change! Bummer. So I start thinking about it more and I remembered a key issue. When I had the coil wire off the 'bad' coil it was arcing all over, I was in a hurry and guess I thought that maybe the top of the coil was cracked or something. So I finally used my brain and started to check downstream, i.e. distributor and rotor. Well, when I started to remove the distributor cap, a bunch of little pieces and powder were falling out. I got a rag and tried to prevent as much as possible from falling down into the timing area. Anyway, the rotor had basically disintegrated. Sooo, same symptom of running on 4 cylinders, but different cause. Here's the kicker...no CEL. Hmmm. I think it works because is comes on at start up and it blinked rapidly when I checked for codes. Oh well, on to the next repair. Peace

Hi Rusty, This sounds a lot like what happened to my 93 a year ago. It ended up being one of the ignitions coils had went bad. You didn't say if it has been gradually getting worse, but mine was a sudden condition. There is an easy, albeit crude, way to check the coils. With the enging OFF, remove one of the coil wires. If the car will either not start at all, that is likely a GOOD coil. Replace the wire and remove the other coil wire. If the car starts and is still running bad, you likely have found the bad coil. They're only 50-60 bucks and fairly easy to replace yourself. There is one right on the top, front of the engine just to the passenger side of where the top radiator hose connects. The other one is a little harder to get at. Follow the lower small hose from your coolant resevoir down and it will pass right by the coil. It could definitely be some other issue, but this is pretty common and easy to check. Jeff

Sorry that eternity has passed by without an update. Thanks fsuguy. I wasn't able to check your reply before I did the repair, but that's a very helpful breakdown for others. Anyway to update, the coil was definitely the problem. While I was at it I changed the plugs and wires and cleaned the throttle body. By far the most time consuming plug change that I can remember. I've dealt with other issues since then, and now I'm having some others I'm currently trying to sort out. I will search other topics so I don't mess things up, but one that's somewhat related to this is a 'miss' or hesitation during moderate acceleration (mild pedal or flooring it it's ok). It was doing it before and after the coil change. Thanks!

This just happened to my wifes car on Friday, left it at a local garage over the weekend and did research(including this post). Today pulled the coil wire of pass side no start at all. Pulled off drivers side ran the same. Guess my patience will be tried a bit changing it tomorrow, but at least I'll save a bunch over the garage doing it. I'll update results. Thanks