I purchased a 99 Saturn SC2 in December. It has been running great until last week. I was parked with the car running and it shut off on its own. Now I am having problems getting it started. Everything works i.e. radio, lights, power windows, etc and it turns over but it will not start. I tried starting the car with the gas pedal pushed all the way to the floor but it still isn't starting. What do you think I need to check?

 

Go to the DEALER ask for the ETCS and connector .............. replace it. Or you can go to PetesPumkinPatch&AutoParts and get what you pay for.

 

Thank you for the quick reply. I will what you said. Out of curiousity, what is ECTS and what does the connector connect to? I'm just trying to educate myself.

 

ECTS == Engine Coolant Temperature Sensor. It varies the "richness" of the air/fuel mixture by sensing the temperature of the engine coolant. Not only will it make the car hard to start, when you do get it to run, the fuel mileage will be lousy

 

This would be the point where I would measure fuel pressure while trying to start the car to see if there is any, thus determining if the fuel pump is any good.

 

i would start checking the basics first if it were my saturn basic
stuff like does it have spark? is it getting fuel? and air?
if those are good next thing i would do is look for the timing
belt cover pry it back enough with a screw driver and see if that
timing belt is tight on there if its loose and moves freely then youl
never be able to start it because timing belt is broken

 

Well, it may come as a surprise to you that the timing belt (the rubber thingy) is missing completly.
Cause it uses a chain! And it seems to me if I wanted to make a quck check to see if that was broken which it probably isn't I would look down the Oil fill into the overhead cam and valve cover and see if one of the cams was turning. If it wasn't when you tried to start the car before and no damage has taken place, it probably wouldn't now. If the cam was turning. At least you would know the chain wasn't broken.
but yes, the basics are important and checking for spark and such is pretty much straight forward.
The only hard part I have found on late engines (those using fuel injection) is checking for fuel. There is a lot of safety built into the operation and the fuel pump is computor controled.
Thus if you try to start the car, turning the key turns on the pump, if the computor thinks the thing isn't started after a moment or two, it turns off the pump. Pressure at the fuel rail is in the area of 35-45 # depending on a few things.
I don't know how successful you will be checking for fuel. If there are two of you, one of you can depress the center of the Shrader Valve, looks like a tire valve only different and generally in the fuel rail somewhere. Fuel will or should shoot out under about 45# pressure. And then quit if the computor shuts it off to prevent fire, which can happen when the fuel shoots out. The pressure can dissapate too some times faster than you can jump from behind the wheel and check it your self.
This forced me to buy a fuel pressure gauge when working on fuel injected cars. Specially by myself.
good luck, report back, a good mystery is always enjoyable.