Hey guys, new to the forum, hope I can get some advice here.

I'm new the chevy's, I've always owned fords in the past but I purchased a 2000 3500 for my business a few months back. Truck always ran really good, then started having some issues with starts and stuttering when it wasn't warmed in the morning. Nothing that isn't out of the ordinary.

Then one day my employee parks it, sets over the weekend, goes to crank it on Monday, and nothing. We changed the fuel filter and it was obviously really bad, truck came from up north so it was pretty rusty but the fuel in the lines didn't have any rust in it so I guess it was doing it's job. We put a new filter in and let it prime, still the truck won't crank. I checked the fuel pressure, it's 65psi at the schrader valve so I know that's good. I checked and made sure all plugs have spark by letting it arc between the manifold and plugwire. I changed the Crank posistion sensor and put new plugs in it.

The truck will just turn over and over, ever so often almost will bust off but then doesn't, then when you release the ignition it will sputter a bit, I believe the engine rotates in the other direction when this happens and it will puff air out of the throttle body when it does this.

I'm getting fuel, spark, and air. I have no idea what else would prevent it from starting. I also put a timing light on it, painted the harmonic balancer and #1 flashed everytime on the mark when it was being turned over. The only thing I havn't done is replace the distributer cap/rotor, plug wires, and coil.

Can anyone give me some help as to where I can go from here? My employee keeps telling me he thinks either the rings are seized or that a valve is stuck, I just don't see how that's possible. He's wanting me to put a heavy oil in each cylinder and let it set over night and swears that will fix it. I'm not into cutting corners and I'm really hesitant to do something like that.

Sure hope someone can help, this truck is so important to my business and I can't really afford to take it to a shop. I've worked on cars my whole life but I'm scratching my head on this one.

Thanks for any help.

Jerome.

 

You state it won't crank, but you have spark?

 

Truck had spark, seemed weak amber on some, bright blue on others.

On a hunch and just for grins, I went up to advanced tonight and bought a distributer cap and rotor, replaced it in 10 mins and she fired up and runs like a brand new one.

For any of you fellas that think something simple isn't what to go to first, on the vortechs it seems that's what will get it done. I'm amazed that a Cap and Rotor could make a truck seem like it had completely jumped time and not start like that. That girl likes her fuel to be a certain psi, and her spark to have just the right umph.

Hope this thread helps someone one day, as I spent 2 solid days trying to figure out what was wrong with this thing.

Thanks!

 

I got a 97 vortec, has spark and 65lbs fuel pressure. wont start, dump in some fuel down throttle, runs untill fuel is gone. What am I missing? no codes