'82 380SEL will not start
 

Hello, I am new to this website. Pardon the username, however I am involved with the restoration of a '73 Barracuda and found it simplier to just use the username I am using from a Mopar seb site. I have a '82 380SEL which will not start. I have basically given up and posted the car on E-bay, now I am having second thoughts and am thinking about giving it one last ditch effort to get the car running on my own. The car had a very high speed idle problem before it quit running which I think I may have solved by finding and replacing the Idle Control module behind glove box. This module had a burned pin. Now the car cranks just fine, has a strong spark, fuel pump seems to work, however I cannot get the car to fire. I do not recall if I checked (through oil filler cap) to see if the timing chain is moving the cam. I cannot even get the car to act as if if might start by spraying starting fluid in the intake. Any suggestions? As indicated I have already given up but am now having second thoughts and am willing to invest a little more time and effort.

You might want to post your question on the SL forum - there is a lot of experience over there with the 3.8 engine due to its huge popularity as an SL engine - I know that there are posters on that forum who would probably help you a great deal. Just out of curiosity, have you tried to pull a plug wire and see if you are getting any spark by arcing it to a plug? If you have got spark and the engine cranks, unfortunately the single timing chain on the 380 engine becomes the next suspect. If that is the case, we have a great parts forum where you can sell the car piece by piece.

Thanks for trhe advice. I will post on the SL forum. The car has spark at the end of the plug wires. I think I need to quickly check the timing chain. If that is the problem I might fix instead of dumping the car...