NEED HELP ASAP WITH PARENTS 1992 Park Avenue ULTRA SC'ed
 

Hi all,
My parents are on vacation and their 1992 Park Avenue Ultra broke down in some small town in Iowa and they just called me. My dad said that the car won't rev. He said for the last couple weeks it didn't have nearly as much power as usual, and it gradually been getting worse.
First it was when he'd kick it down, it was like it din't have nearly as much power, and then the rpms started coming down. Since they left Sauk Centre, Minnesota yesterday they were limited to 3000 rpm, then down to 2500 it kept coming down until it came to where it is limited now, at 1500 rpm. He said they can't even go up a hill.
The service engine soon light is on and he doesn't have the engine code reader along (simple Wal-mart paper clip in a black box type of deal). Anyhow which slots would he jumper with a wire?
He said he stapped at a body shop (the repair shop he could find and they put it up on the hoist and pulled the fuel filter and checked that. That flows perfectly well. They thought it was the filter because the way the car chokes and sputters the harder you step on the gas pedal.
Anyhow any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Martin

The key may be in the SES light.

http://www.bonnevilleclub.com/techinfo/?article=34

Re: NEED HELP ASAP WITH PARENTS 1992 Park Avenue ULTRA SC'ed
 

If he's still in the vicinity of that helpful body shop, have them put it back up on the lift and (temporarily) disconnect the catalytic convertor, then road-test the car. My vote is for a partially-clogged convertor here; those symptoms match mine. Replacing the convertor fixed the problem.

Well, my dad checked the codes last night and he got them in the following order:

55 ECM failure
45 o2 signaling rich condition too long
12 diagnostic mode
31 Park/Neutral switch
41 Missing or erratic CAM sensor signal
54 M/C circuit shorted to 12 volt source or faulty ECM

Well, today he put in a new ECM and oxygen sensor and that didn't change a thing.
After that my parents drove to Liberty, MO and made an appointment for 8:00AM tomorrow to have a full fledged diagnostics run on it. I told my dad to have them run a test on the catalytic converter since that could be why the o2 sensor is giving a rich reading.
If the cat is bad I told him to find an exhaust shop and have them install a test pipe until he gets home and we'll put in a new high-flow unit for alot cheaper than the typical exhaust shop out there (besides one look at that Park Avenue Ultra with the 16" chrome rims and Vogue wide whitewall and yellow strip wall tires and they'd be saying to themselves to charge about 3 times as much as the 'average Joe'.)

Anyhow, will keep you all updated.
Thanks for the tips also.
Martin

If the cat is bad, you can just have a shop drill a 1/2" hole in the pipe flange in front of the cat. You will hear an exhaust leak, but there will be enough flow for the engine to run normally and get them back home.

This happened a couple years ago to me. The shop I stopped at made most of their money from tows/repairs from the turnpike, so nothing was cheap. They quoted me like $300 for a cat. I was only an hour from home, so I told the guy to just drill the hole. It worked well enough that I was able to drive the car a couple days until I could get an appointment scheduled.

Jay

That sounds suspiciously like an ECM failure, but the new one didn't fix it? The shop will figure it out, but the next thing I would have done would be to clear the codes and pull them again. Some may have been old.

Turned out the fuel pump was bad. They put in a new one along with new AC delco plugs (dad won't say how much) and my dad says it runs better than it ever has.
He says to give you guys a special thanks.
Now I have to go and get a new fuel pump for my car as today with temps in the high 80's and with 3/4 tank of gas my car is doing the same thing as his, only I can get 3200 rpm's out of mine. -This sucks.
Later,
Martin

What does your famliy do to fuel pumps anyways? Do you run down into the depths of these gas tanks? :wink:

No, Just high miles. I've got 194,4xx miles on my SLE now and my parents Park Ultra has 200,xxx miles on it. Thats right around where the fuel pump went out in my 1992 SE so I guess it must be a standard to replace the pump at 200,000 miles, give or take 10k.
This is annoying and I wanted to go to the track this Friday, but I can't afford a fuel pump now since I am changing the muffler and I don't have much of an income (in-other-words I drive 58 miles round trip for under $8.00 hr which by the time it gets to me is only 60% percent of that due to the standard deductions and the cost of commuting daily).
Stylez