Hey everybody,

I would love any help I might get with a problem I'm having with my car. I have a 1990 Plymouth Laser RS Turbo, and I was having some sputtering and hesitation occasionally right at start up that would go away almost immediately. About a week ago it ran fine on about a 5 mile excursion, then when I restarted it about 1.5 hours after last running the car, it gave me sputtering with low rpms (100 - 300) then it cut out. I was able to restart and rev higher with the gas pedal but even with the pedal depressed it would go back down to low rpms and die. Since I wasn't home and really didn't want to have to get it towed I tried restarting and revving to about 2000 rpms about 5 more times but each time it sputtered and died. On the final konk out, I heard a clicking sound from somewhere behind the radio in the dash. The click sounded kind of like the click a solenoid makes when there isn't enough juice to crank a motor, but it was multiple clicks in a row and definitely sounded on the passenger compartment side of the firewall. I put in new plugs and wires (car has a direct ignition, so there is no distributor or rotor) and had no luck. The old plugs didn't show any signs of wear either. Then I moved on to the fuel system and replaced the fuel filter and found there was a blown fuse (there is a fuse box mounted on the positive lead to the battery that houses fuses for the ignition, auto fan and MPI - the MPI fuse was blown), so I replaced the fuse and got no luck. Then I checked for spark by taking one of the plugs out and grounding it and checked for spark, and there wasn't any spark. From there I checked in my Haynes manual to check my ECM (which is located behind the radio where the clicking sound came from, this is also where the fuel relay is located). To test the ECM I attached an analog voltmeter to the OBD plug and when I checked for any codes by monitoring the sweeps of the voltmeter I received nothing at all. The voltmeter is supposed to go from 1 to 12 back and forth if it is operating normally, or 0 to 12 and stay there if the ECM is bad. But when I did my test it never left 0. I am at a loss, and I hesitate to replace the ECM because 1. it isn't the cheapest of parts and 2. if it is bad I don't know what would have caused it to go bad and I would hate to fry another one. Sorry for being so long winded, but I figured the more detail up front the better, and as most of you can probably already tell, I am by no means a professional.

Thanks in advance.

Moved to the Plymouth forum

Our 93 Laser had a no spark problem and found that the ECM on a lot of the these cars (late 80's through early90's) had a problem with some capacitors leaking and damaging the main board. I took our's apart and repaired some burned up areas and replaced two capacitors. This fixed the no spark problem and the car will start but it still has a timing issue, my suggestion is to have the ECM repaired. There is a company that will do this for about $160 (which is much cheaper than one from an Auto parts store) and it has a lifetime warranty on it. Do a google search for avproecm for the website. The clicking you are hearing is coming from the EFI control relay that is on the passenger side, in front of the ECM (which is located at the front of the center console.

dammit!
mike delete these tqwo posts of mine. i screwed up soemhow.
sorry.

DOH!!

I too have a Laser. I'm a 92 AWD though, but still, i dont have an answer to your problem, but incase you havent figured out your Laser's problem yet, have you been on dsmtuners? It's another forum site specifically for DSM's, and i think theyd be able to get you an answer quicker and more accurate than asking on a site with a wide variety of car knowledge. Infact if you havent signed up there, sign up quick (may take a day to get confirmation) then copy and paste every word from your first post in here, it seems very thorough, and would probably get you an answer quick. Just make sure to search before you post, it'll save you some frustration with other members. As you can see, I'm long winded too, maybe it's a Laser thing :rolleyes: . Anyways, let me know if i left any blanks. Good luck :thumbsup: .

I'm not trying to promote other forum sites, just trying to get the guy help. I had problems there, that's why I'm here (just signed up here today actually), i really dont want to start off on the wrong foot.