Hello all,

Apologies for this being a rather lengthy first post. My mom has a 2000 Elantra with 170k miles. No problems at all with it aside from a rebuilt transmission a couple of years ago and normal stuff like battery replacement, tires, etc.

It has been running/driving fine. No stalling, stumbling, or no start symptoms at all recently. Suddenly yesterday, as my mom was leaving to run some errands the car wouldn't start. It cranks over and over but never starts. Every few cranks, it will *almost* catch - like it's about to start - but then won't.

It smelled of gas in the engine bay and I pulled the plugs and they were all wet with gas. I also did the old screwdriver in the plug wire trick to check for spark and there was no spark on any of them. I also noticed that one of the plug wires was misaligned in the channel and the plastic cover had been screwed down onto the #3 wire severing the rubber.

I thought for sure that since she had fuel and no spark that the problem was the ignition coil (and possibly the damaged plug wire), so I just went ahead and installed new plugs, wires, and coil in her car.

Well, it still won't start. I did some searching here and came across several threads with similar symptoms describing the crank position sensor and/or cam positions sensor as culprits. I don't have a code reader, and the car won't start to let me run it to Idiotzone, so I don't have a way to check for codes unless it can be done at the ECU or with lights on the dash (like older Hondas).

Is there a definitive way I can know for sure which of these (if either) is the culprit? I tested the crank position sensor and it reads 813 ohms, but I'm not sure if I'm testing it properly. There's three pins on it, and after trying several combos of the pins, I was finally able to get an ohm reading. I assume this should be correct as it's the only combination in which I got a reading.

I understand the range should be about 400-600 ohms. Is a reading of 813 definitely "bad"? Is the cam position sensor tested the same way, and if so, what should its reading be?

Thanks for any help

 

Okay just to update this:

I hate to keep buying parts without knowing definitely whether or not they'll fix the issue, but my brother is the manager at the parts place where I got them, so I'll be able to return them no problems if it turns out not to be the issue.

So, anyway, this evening I went and bought a new crank position sensor from him.

Out of curiosity, I tested it just as I did the original and it read 899 ohms. I found this a little odd as it's out of the range I saw online, but I installed it anyway.

Car still doesn't start. What are the odds the new sensor is bad?

 

Bumping this for the sake of future searchers. It irritates me to no end finding a thread with symptoms similar to mine only to find the original poster never updated the thread. So I won't be that guy

Anyway, the problem was the cam sensor. More details in this thread:

https://www.hyundaiforum.com/forum/s...?t=9942&page=2