1987 buick 3.8 v6 not turning over;

Asked by str8sav Jun 18, 2015 at 05:10 PM about the 1987 Buick Century Limited Sedan FWD

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

hello, well to not make a long story short but keep it down to as factual as possible here
in lies the issue, i just bought this car with 97k miles on it thinking it would be a good
buy however from the start had issues with it that seem to only get worse as i put
preventuive maintness in it like change plugs, wires, fluids, oil/transmission, and shortly
after doing that it would not start at all then tracked it down to a plug wire not being in
the right coil but afrter that the car ran like sh*& so i went through with the paper clip
and checked for codes i was getting a map/maf sensor codes so i replaced the maf
with a brand new one and after that everything went to critical it would not start then
when i re ran the code check code 34, 42, 22 so after replacing like i said the maf, i
unpluugged the battery allowing it to reset and see if any codes would still be present
unkowingly ressetting everything and with out it running i now know nothing of any
present codes so i went trough replaced the rank sensor new cam sensor new oil
sensor new after i noticed the wirring harness on oil sensor was severly corroded s i
am getting gas to the plugs apparently spark as well i think it might be oil sensor idk
lost please help

5 Answers

86,105

You know, whenever someone tells you that they have a 28 year old car with less than 100,000 miles you have to wonder "how did they do that.? And, it's a striking example of a case where mileage is not necessarily the barometer for the overall condition of the car or how well it was maintained. So, do you have the original records on this car? Or, do you know anything about the previous history? I imagine you bought this from a private party, did you have the car checked out by your mechanic? A good mechanic can run diagnostic codes you probably can't. Good luck.

Best Answer Mark helpful

well to answer no i did not have a mechanic come look at it but for 300$ i figured hey 90k miles cant go wrong right drovwe it home it ran kinda rough but aS SOON AS I STARTED DOING PREVENTIVE NORMAL MAINTNESS IT ALL WENT TO HELL LOL ...I WILL CHECK THE ECM OUT TOMMORROW IS THERE ANY WAY THAT IT COULD BE THE OIL SENSOR WIRED NOT BEING PLUGGED IN CORRECTLY CAUSEIN THE FUEL PUMP TO NOT FULLY ENGAge...idk thanks for the ideas aand help guys

and also i dont know how a good mechanic could read the blinking lights on the dash any better then i could i would imagine seeing as its obd1 maybe perceiving them a little better but not by much seeing as the first and only orignal code only showed bad map/maf sensor not the plethora of the codes it last genrated lol

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