Four of Manley's students who competed and won second place at the Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills Competition.

A few years ago, four of my high school automotive students participated in the state finals of the Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills contest. Our school, Smoky Hill High School, had two of the 10 teams that competed in the contest. The competitors had to diagnose no-starts on two 2001 Ford Mustangs.

The contest began when the teams ran to their cars, flipped over the work orders under the wiper blades, read the listed customer concerns and started diagnosing their vehicles. We instructors watched in puzzlement from the sidelines as some of the Mustangs ran for a while, then died, while others were complete no-starts. "What could cause the cars to act differently?" I asked another instructor. "They are supposed to have the same bugs."

Time passed, and the students attacked other concerns: Trouble codes led to defective sensors, light harnesses were faulty and fuses and bulbs were broken. The bad parts were swapped with the judge for good parts and then reinstalled in the car. Many vehicle systems were brought back to life until finally, one of my teams faced the inevitable: Why won't the car start?

I saw them looking at the engine and talking with each other. "What could be the cause?" I was thinking with them from a distance. Then I saw them poke around the engine compartment and remove the air intake ductwork, where they discovered a tennis ball wedged halfway into the air intake, just before the throttle body. They threw the ducting back together, fired up the Mustang and went to final judging. Their diagnostic abilities earned them a second-place trophy, some new hand tools and scholarships to automotive colleges.

Fuel injector spraying. Fuel injector balance. Student with Tech 2 scan tool.

Each time I am faced with a no-start, I run the possibilities through my mind: "Is it compression, spark, fuel?" Ever since this contest, I've added "air" to my checklist. I know - how often do you see a tennis ball lodged in an air cleaner hose? Sounds like an issue that would only occur near high-end country clubs. I have, however, found several air cleaners that doubled as critter quarters - homes to mice, possum and other varmints that are determined to cause driveability concerns for the poor saps who own their "mobile homes."

When we're faced with a vehicle that has one, two or all of its cylinders not contributing horsepower, how do we isolate the root cause for a wimpy cylinder or a full-blown no-start? No-starts seem to be the easiest to isolate - a slipped timing belt, a defective fuel pump, an ignition coil that's arcing to ground, a module that has failed - there is always a straightforward series of tests that lead to the root cause.

If the engine cranks, but fails to start, I'll usually check the most obvious things first. I'll hook up a couple of spark testers to plug wires and a noid light to an injector connector. If I'm missing one or both of these signals, I'll funnel diagnosis to a specific component or connection. Often, there is a spark and injector trigger, but no fuel pressure when checked with a gauge. Still other times, the engine sounds as though it has low compression, which is confirmed with a compression test. But which methods do you use to isolate a single cylinder misfire? What is the most effective method to find the root cause for one cylinder that does not contribute any power?

Power Balancing

Older engines with distributors are easy enough to power balance; I still have a power balance tester that hooks to the No. 1 plug wire and to the negative coil terminal that allows me to manually kill cylinders. Distributorless systems need a different method to kill cylinders. I use a set of metal spacers that allow me to use a test light to ground the spark to that one cylinder, or I insert inch-long pieces of vacuum hose. Most vacuum hose has enough carbon to be used for this purpose. This one is great to show students!

Many OBD-II systems, and some OBD-I systems, allow you to power balance the engine by shutting down injectors or by killing coils to see if the rpm changes when this is done.

'98 Olds Cutlass - 3800 V-6

We recently had a customer bring this vehicle to us with a "shaking at idle" concern. Our Tech 2 scanner was able to perform power balance and injector balance tests. The power balance test revealed that the No. 2 cylinder wasn't contributing (no rpm drop when killed). A spark test on that wire verified good fire, and a compression test showed 125 psi. As I worked through the possible scenarios with my students, several listed the injector as a suspect, so I asked them how we would go about testing it. The ohms test answer came up, so we tested No. 2 and compared it with the other five. They ranged from 11 to 13 ohms; all within specification.

Fuel injector tester.

It was now time to show my class an injector balance test. We hooked up the fuel pressure gauge and pressurized the pump. Next, we energized each cylinder's injector - one at a time - while always pressurizing the pump before the next test. Each injector dropped the pressure on the gauge around 5 psi, except when we tested the No. 2 injector; this one did not drop any pressure at all. This meant that no fuel was flowing from the pintle. To confirm our diagnosis, we pulled the fuel rail from the manifold, and performed the injector balance test once again. We watched each injector spray a nice, fine mist, but when No. 2 came up, there was no spray, not even a drop.

Next, I grabbed our hand-held injector balance tester that can be used on any port fuel injected system to energize the injectors. This unit will let you simulate idle, cruise and wide-open throttle, or manually control the injector by holding down the button. The other three modes have a calibrated time built in, such as 10 milliseconds for the idle selection. This unit, along with a fuel pressure gauge, will elicit the same results as the OBD-II/scan tool method.

No Spark

If, after power balancing, you discover that a cylinder or two has no fire to its plug, then simply backtrack until you find the defective part. On a conventional distributor ignition, if - for example - one cylinder out of four has no spark, then the problem would be traced to a plug wire or a plug; some component after the spark entered the cap. I still see burned-through sections in distributor caps that divert one cylinder's spark to ground, or an adjacent cylinder.

On a distributorless ignition system (DIS), the faulty part would be the wire, coil or module. If the engine has two spark plugs that are without spark and they share a common coil, swap that coil with an adjacent one and see if the no-spark condition follows the coil. If it does, then the coil is at fault. But if the problem remains, the module could be the culprit. This same method can be used to diagnose coils on a coil-over-plug (COP) system.

We Have Fuel, We Have Spark

Relative compression test with a Fluke 98 lab scope.

If a suspect cylinder has its required allotment of fuel and spark at the correct time, there is another reason why it is not contributing. The cylinder's ability to pump air must be checked next, to eliminate any mechanical causes.

If you have a lab scope that will perform relative compression testing, often this test can lead you to the cylinder with low compression in the fastest time. Usually, however, we must screw in a mechanical compression gauge.

Once a low compression cylinder is identified, a cylinder leak-down test must be performed to isolate the root cause. Is the intake or exhaust valve burned? Has the sealing ability of the rings finally given up? Has a camshaft lobe started to go flat?

Introducing air into a cylinder that is at top-dead-center on the compression stroke will reveal where the compression is escaping. A burned valve will allow air into the intake or exhaust systems, and a poor cylinder-to-piston seal will fill the crankcase with air. A flat camshaft lobe won't show up on a leak-down test; this will most likely show up during running compression test.

Alternative Reasons

I still recall Chevrolet 350s that would have a "dead" No. 8 cylinder when the vacuum hose for the transmission vacuum modulator would leak vacuum. Vacuum leaks can kill a cylinder as much as a plugged injector. If the fuel mixture is too lean, it won't burn. When searching for the reason for a dead hole when spark, fuel and compression are normal, never forget the integrity of the air intake system. A good method to locate intake leaks is with a smoke machine. This is less scary, less dangerous, and often more accurate than using carb cleaner or propane around a running engine.

Oh, and don't forget those pesky field mice and tennis balls!

Brian Manley is a vocational automotive instructor for the Cherry Creek school district in Aurora, Colo. He is an ASE master certified automobile technician and a former member of the National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation (NATEF) board of trustees. He can be reached at manley_brian@hotmail.com.

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