Trying to help a friend get his car going. He took it for a short drive last week, and it died. well, it ran, but would not rev past idle. No power.

We towed it to his house. Upon further interrogation, he said there'd been some minor backfiring prior, when going down hill.

The afternoon it quit running, first thing I did was pull the AMM plug (ign off, of course), no difference.

Today, pulled back the timing belt cover, and all looks okay in there. Timing belt was done about 30k miles ago.

So, lets assume the timing belt did not skip teeth, and the AMM isn't the issue.. what could we be looking at?

We are dealing with the oddball Chrysler ignition, the earliest of LH injection. Wiring harness has been replaced and looks okay.

Fuel pressure? Maybe clogged filter? Weak pump? I'm rather at a loss. The thing barely starts at all now... And it's cold outside :)

Thanks for any thoughts in advance!
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-Matt I ♥ my ♂

Have you tried starting fluid? If that works then maybe it's the gas.
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1980 245 Canadian B21A with SU carb, M46 trans, 3:31 dif, in Brampton, Ont.

Sounds like two things you should address for sure. The air mass meter, the silver kind, are total garbage. I chased problems on my 83 for years until finally replacing the ECU on the passenger side compartment and repining the AMM wiring clip to work with an 85-87. It gave me a lot more power and a constant idle.

The Chysler distributor needs to go too. But the problem you'll face is the pigtail wire that comes off the white caps. It will have a round connector and the bosch are square. I soldered end to end a pigtail off another harness. You can change the whole ignition harness from the ICU in the engine bay to the distributor. Shoot I was at a pic n pull today that has a bosch distributor and the computer from an 86. The AMM meter is missing but I have an extra 007 for an 86. If your up for the swap let me know. text me 801-706-7677

PnP prices are
Distributor $40
ECU $25
harness $13-25
AMM $20
Plus shipping and a little for my time.


The instructions on repinning are in the archive. Its pretty straight forward and easy.

Thanks both for your thoughts!

As for bad gas, we kinda ruled that out, based on the suddenness that the problem occurred.

ECU? That's a possibility that I'd not considered. Thanks for that!

Distributor? Yes, I, too, hate the Chrysler setup. Does one have to change the ignition module as well?

We should have donor cars with both ECU, distributors, etc. So throwing parts at it is not a problem from a price standpoint.

Of course, AMM was first thought, but there is zero change when it's unplugged. And we don't have a spare one of them :(

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-Matt I ♥ my ♂