Hoesgottaeat2
Full Access Member
Good morning folks. Posting a PROBLEM SOLVED here.
Had an intermittent crank/no-start on my '96 Suburban for the last year or so. I noticed this when I let the truck sit for (2) days or more.
Confirmed initially that it had fuel, but no spark when the symptom occurred. So I checked the distributor cap which had been replaced within a year or so of the onset of the issue. Wires were replaced at the same time.
Over time I began to see a correlation between moisture (when it was parked outside overnight) and a crank/no-start in the morning. It would often start later in the day after the moisture from the morning burned off.
I burned up one starter already from the long cranks.
I next swapped the ignition coil, thinking the epoxy coating on it was compromised, leaving the coil susceptible to malfunction when exposed to moisture. I swapped it with a known good one from another Vortec 5.7 from my spare parts box. The issue still persisted.
So I found myself doing what I could to start the truck daily (on my days off) to get the engine hot enough to burn off any moisture from sitting. This worked 100% of the time when I did this.
Then the recent holidays came and I failed to get out to start it every day and I got bit by the crank/no-start issue again.
So I rolled the Burb down into my shop and parked it next to my '99 Hoe that is stored for the winter.
I began to methodically swap ignition items with the Hoe until the Burb finally started.
The culprit? Distributor cap. The rotor had enough moisture on it when removed that it made it obvious this was the culprit.
The Burb started immediately when the D-cap and rotor were swapped from the Hoe.
A few other issues that were resolved immediately upon replacement of the D-cap and rotor were:
- No more engine stumble when downshifting from OD when going uphill (was consistently happening with old D-cap and rotor)
- No more misfires when sitting at a light
- Starts instantly every time and it has been raining here for a solid two days.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit the fix was that simple. It was my initial suspect as you can see, but then it continued to get overlooked until I circled back around to it again almost a year later. This is a first for me having a D-cap fail in this manner. It looked near new when I replaced it here recently. Definitely a case of "looks can be deceiving".
I hope this helps someone in the future.
Had an intermittent crank/no-start on my '96 Suburban for the last year or so. I noticed this when I let the truck sit for (2) days or more.
Confirmed initially that it had fuel, but no spark when the symptom occurred. So I checked the distributor cap which had been replaced within a year or so of the onset of the issue. Wires were replaced at the same time.
Over time I began to see a correlation between moisture (when it was parked outside overnight) and a crank/no-start in the morning. It would often start later in the day after the moisture from the morning burned off.
I burned up one starter already from the long cranks.
I next swapped the ignition coil, thinking the epoxy coating on it was compromised, leaving the coil susceptible to malfunction when exposed to moisture. I swapped it with a known good one from another Vortec 5.7 from my spare parts box. The issue still persisted.
So I found myself doing what I could to start the truck daily (on my days off) to get the engine hot enough to burn off any moisture from sitting. This worked 100% of the time when I did this.
Then the recent holidays came and I failed to get out to start it every day and I got bit by the crank/no-start issue again.
So I rolled the Burb down into my shop and parked it next to my '99 Hoe that is stored for the winter.
I began to methodically swap ignition items with the Hoe until the Burb finally started.
The culprit? Distributor cap. The rotor had enough moisture on it when removed that it made it obvious this was the culprit.
The Burb started immediately when the D-cap and rotor were swapped from the Hoe.
A few other issues that were resolved immediately upon replacement of the D-cap and rotor were:
- No more engine stumble when downshifting from OD when going uphill (was consistently happening with old D-cap and rotor)
- No more misfires when sitting at a light
- Starts instantly every time and it has been raining here for a solid two days.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit the fix was that simple. It was my initial suspect as you can see, but then it continued to get overlooked until I circled back around to it again almost a year later. This is a first for me having a D-cap fail in this manner. It looked near new when I replaced it here recently. Definitely a case of "looks can be deceiving".
I hope this helps someone in the future.
