1994 ford escort wagon 1.9 turns over but won’t start

10

Asked by Nation Sep 25, 2017 at 09:28 AM about the 1994 Ford Escort

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

So I’m at my wits end with this car. I paid 300 for
two of them and one went to scrap. This one is an
automatic and it hit a deer, doing only damage to
the radiator and hood but all was replaced and ran
fine before. We even drove it an hour home. The
guy who sold it to me won’t answer the phone
either.

Last weekend we decided to drive it to pick my
brothers girlfriend up from work because his car
had a blown radiator. When I bought the car it had
the ignition removed so you started it with a screw
driver and unlocked the wheel with the key in the
ignition. We drove for about 10 minutes or so with
the radio and A/C going. The fan hadn’t been
replaced yet on the radiator and finally broke so
there went the A/C. Then we started hearing a
ticking noise. I dismissed it as the fan being broken
because it was still spinning just not fast enough for
the air to make a difference in the car. Temperature
gauge wasn’t rising above normal. We were at a
stop sign and all the dash lights came on and the
car just shut off. We pushed it to a dealership
across the street and it started 5 minutes later. We
got to the middle of town and again it shut off at a
stop sign and again right before we reached the
diner. We let it set in the parking lot for over an hour
thinking maybe it needed coolant. Put some in until
it overflowed. When we were on our way back we
got half way home and the clicking was getting loud
and louder as you accelerated then the car just shut
off again but kept going a bit until it lost all power.
We pulled over and sat and it never started back
up. Had it towed home and it’s been 2 weeks and it
still won’t start.

Yesterday I took the timing cover off and the belt is
on the edge of the cam hanging over a bit. Tried
starting fluid and it still wouldn’t start but acts like it
almost wants to. Ran it on the computer and it gave
no bad codes. At this point it’s overfilled with oil and
gas spark and all that. I’m not trashing the car and
just want to fix the damn thing.

2 Answers

10

It also might be good to note that after I had it towed home and tried starting it the ignition started smoking and so I put in a new one out of the other car.

1 people found this helpful.

Water in the gas. I'm having a similar problem with a 98 Ford Escort. It cranks but won't start. Everything is fine with no bad codes from the engine but two common anti theft codes that are not the problem. I use a screwdriver to start the car since the owner broke the key inside the lock cylinder. I also had a similar problem with a Dodge Durango. Tried everything, and it turned out to be water in the tank.

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