Hey all, sorry in advance for the long story.

I've been a lurker here for a while, reading thru some of these threads is part of what made me decide to buy a 95 Montero SR a few months back. I bought it knowing it was burning some coolant, and that I'd have to do headgaskets etc.

I tore the engine down, had heads machined, new valve seals, bought all new timing belt, pulleys, gaskets, water pump, basically anything I could think of. Got everything back together, fired it up and it had a bad misfire. It was throwing a lot of gas through the exhaust, so I had to tear down the upper intake to figure out what was going on. Turns out, I pinched an injector wire and it was stuck wide open. Fixed a few wires and buttoned it back up.

Once I had everything back together again, I have not been able to get it to start.

My symptoms
* The engine turns over fine, it will rotate, seem like it fires, but it never gets going
* It also seems like something is fighting the rotation of the engine, if I cut fuel it rotates much faster


What I've done for diagnosis so far
* Check compression thinking I might have fried some rings (150lbs or so across all 6)
* Check fuel, all injectors pulsing and spraying
* Check for spark, all 6 sparking well, new plugs
* Check, double check, and recheck all my timing marks, dead on
* Check timing wheels (not really sure what these are called) on cam shaft and crank shaft, no problems
* Swapped out cam sensor w/ new one
* New ignition module
* I have the 3.5 motor so no distributor, and the plugs pretty much cant go to the wrong cylinder

The last point above is kind of a big one for me. It feels to me like this engine has plug wires going to the wrong cylinders. Some of the combustion strokes seem to happen at the wrong time. The engine turns over then slows down when a cylinder is firing at the wrong time. But since this has no distributor, and I literally couldn't put the wrong wire to the wrong cylinder if I wanted to, I'm kind of at a loss.

Hoping anyone can chime in that has any kind of experience with these engines. I've exhausted everything I can think of to check. The thing that I can't understand is that it ran fine the first time I fired it up after doing all the work. Idled, revved up, minus the one cylinder being down. I haven't really changed anything minus the injector wiring and now it wont run even for a second. My next step is sending this thing to the junkyard.


**EDIT**
heres a quick clip of what Im talking about...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW3cqK9USKA

Actually, you could easily have your plug wires on the wrong cylinder - the 3 plug wires each have to be on the correct coil and run to the correct spark plug. Check that you have them correct.

Double check all your electrical connections, particularly the cam and crank sensors.

Yeah, I guess what I meant was, the wires are each different lengths so it would be hard to get them in the wrong spot. Also I didn't actually touch those in between it running and then not, but thanks for the input, its definitely my first thought too.

I've checked and rechecked those connections, swapped out sensors etc, just can't seem to nail it down.

I'd be curious to know if anyone on here had ever had ECM issues that presented themselves like what I'm seeing.

I'm kinda back from the grave here but I've had my 3.5 apart enough times to tell you that from the video you have the wires wrong. Simple as that. Its mis-firing.

There's only 3 coils but the 3 that go to the passenger side are either wrong or you have to electrical connectors to the 3 coils wrong.

Simple as that. Good luck!

Jason <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

P.S. you sure the crazy valve timing on this engine is correct? it's a [censored] to get it all good

Thanks monte, I'll have to check things again. I also have a crank position sensor on its way so Ill swap that out and see if it does me any good.

Keep in mind your timing marks can be correct but the crank can be on the exhaust stroke rather then compression stroke. Crank to cam ratio is 2 to 1

I have learned from experience that these ECUs do not like aftermarket sensors. I had an aftermarket crank sensor installed that was sending such a dirty signal that the engine wouldn't run. This applies to all sensors on these. Mitsu parts are the only way to go.

Hey Mr Jeebs, curious how you determined it was a dirty signal. Did you just swap it out for an OEM mitsu part and it worked okay after that? Did yours sound like my video at all when trying to start?

This monty has been sitting in my yard for a while, I just keep wanting to fix it not quite ready to give up on her yet. Went thru all the injector wiring today and found no faults, so crank sensor is next on the list.

Just wanted to give another update.

Still facing the same problem. I've done a few new things since last time with no results.

First I took apart the injector wiring loom since that got damaged when I first re-installed the upper intake. I redid all of the connections and used a multi meter to check continuity across all plugs, everything here was good.

Next, I bought a set of plug wires. I got ones that are long enough for me to switch coils and see if it would fire any better, it didn't. It didn't seem to have any affect no matter where I connected the wires, the engine continued to turn over the same way it did in the video I put in my first post.

And finally, I put a new crank position sensor in. Of course this also had no effect.

If your timing is good on the top and bottom end. Hows your fuel and fuel pressure? Id also open up the ECU and look for bad spots