[AaronDC]

I'm needing some help.

First, the background:
I'm building a 24hours of Lemons car. The car is a '91 Geo Metro 5-door. The car is to be powered by a rear-mounted 2003 Ford Escape V6. The wire harness, ECU, sensors, etc have all come from a 1998 E1 (I think) SVT Contour donor car. If you're particularly interested in the build, there's more info here: http://www.facebook.com/knoxvegaslowballers


The problem:
Today, we tried for the first time to fire the engine. We have a full harness (minus some rear body stuff), the key, RFID ring sensor, and ECU (KHAI3 strat, SFG0 cal) all from the same car. We bought the Contour not running, so we never tried to turn on the ignition at all. With everything plugged in, we turn the ignition switch. The gages come to life, we get a few lights as expected, some relays click, the throttle air bypass makes some noise. We don't have the fuel pump wired into the stock harness as we're not using the Contour pump. So far, all seems as it should be.

When you turn the ignition switch to the start position, nothing happens. I have tried jumping the solenoid on the starter, and it turns the engine over. We haven't tried doing this with fuel present yet. There's a chance it will start, and there's just something wrong with the start signal wire in the ignition switch.

I have connected a SCT handheld to the OBD-II port. I checked codes, and got a P1681. This would indicate a PATS problem. Is there anything I can check to determine if PATS is keeping the engine from turning over?

I also own a 98 E0 SVT Contour (RLJ1 cal). We swapped the ECU, key, and RFID sensor from that car into the Geo, and had similar end result. No starter action, and all the same lights, relays, etc as with the SFG0 computer. This time though, a checking OBD codes doesn't show the P1681. Instead, it shows P0232, which is related to the fact that we don't have the fuel pump harness connected.



Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we should proceed with figuring out what's happening? If it were a PATS issue, should the throttle air bypass be cycling? I don't think the gage cluster has a PATS light on this car. Is there some other way to know that there IS or ISN"T a PATS issue?


Thanks in advance. We need this thing up and running soon, or we're going to miss the race! It feels like we're so close.

[AaronDC]

As an update, we've tried just putting fuel to it, and jumping the starter. We have confirmed that it IS getting spark, but NO injector pulse at the injector pigtails.

Does having spark rule out this being a PATS issue? We still think that the PATS isn't the problem, but aren't completely sure.


Next step is to try checking for injector pulse a little closer to the ECU. If we find it there, we know it's a harness problem. If we don't find it there, then there's something going on related to the ECU (PATS, etc).