(Electrical) 1996 Dodge Intrepid Fails To Restart After Engine Shut Off

[ItsDefinitelyYourPCMBro]

Vehicle: 1996 Dodge Intrepid
Engine: Chrysler V6 3.3L
Mileage: 176,xxx

Symptoms: Car died while driving around 3 months ago. Towed it home, ABS relay was going nuts, turned out to be a shorted camshaft position sensor. Replaced the sensor, car ran good as new.

A new symptom developed after a few days – after turning off the engine, the car would fail to restart. This would throw a check engine code for – no cam signal detected during cranking. Those familiar with these mid 90s Chrysler ignition systems know that these engines will not start without both a cam and crank signal.

After a visual inspection, I noticed the connecting harness was in rough shape with some bare wiring exposed. Went to the junkyard, cut out my harness and replaced it at the point before the harness runs under the fuel rail. Tried it out, car started, figured problem solved.

The problem continued to reoccur, so I busted out my multimeter and did some testing. I had my proper 5v signal, my proper 8v power, but the ground was measuring 0.19ohms. Those familiar with the concept of electrical resistance will know that anything above 0.1ohms is generally considered to be too much resistance for the proper flow of electricity.

This resistance occurred mainly right after shut down, leading me to believe that this was heat related. As time went on, the resistance disappeared – not gradually, pretty much immediately and seemingly random. But once the resistance dissipated, so did the starting issue.

Now, what once was intermittent is constant. Any time the engine is ran for more than a few minutes, and is shut off, the car will not restart with increasingly long periods of settling. And now, it seems to be happening independent of a resistance value measured at the ground wire, which is shared by all of the engine sensors along one 5v circuit with the PCM.

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. To get to the harness, you have to remove the intake manifold as the harness runs underneath the fuel rail in between the intake manifold and valve cover and I don’t have new gaskets so I’m not gonna take the manifold off. Especially considering this is a daily driver at the moment.

Is my replacement sensor bad? How could one bench test a cam sensor? I don’t have a decent OBD reader handy, and the engine really runs fine once it starts, leading me to believe this has to be entirely electrical.

Any feedback or anyone who has ever run into a similar issue would be so helpful. I’m gonna be buying a Jeep in a few weeks but I have to get this car through in the meanwhile and I’d honestly like it to be functional in general as a backup car or maybe something I’ll sell down the line.

Thanks for any help!

[gkellerman]

Is this the same vehicle/question as this one?: Question regarding 5v reference circuits (in this instance, cam sensor circuit)

If so I wonder if there is a way to merge the threads.

[Author]

Posts