swapped engine, getting no spark

Ok people, I need help figuring out why I'm not getting any spark when I crank over my engine that I just swapped. All connections are good as far as I can tell, tried 2 sets of coil packs, 2 sets of wires. Tried pulling the boot and sticking a grounded plug in it to see if there was spark and got nothing EXCEPT on 2 occasions where it sparked when I let go of cranking the engine over, first time the spark hit my friend for sure. I tried swapping the cam pos sensor from my old engine as well did nothing not sure if the crank pos sensor could cause problems or not but I haven't tried swapping that one yet to see. It's getting fuel and will sputter with starter fluid even when all spark plugs are disconnected with only compression to ignite. I feel like this is going to be some stupid simple fix but I could be wrong. Any Help would be greatly appreciated, I was up till 3AM trying to get it started.

was it the fsze or fsde?


IF the Fsze, need so swap a few things.

if the correct engine, I'd say, not timed correctly, or even blown fuse.

Fsde with a non turbo fsde. To be honest, I have no clue if the original engine is the one I pulled, I got the car for super cheap and I've had to do a lot of work to it. A lot of stuff the previous owners did is band aid stuff. I can tell you however that I had to swap everything that bolts to the JDM engine I got with the ones from my old engine.

Update: Checked fuses, all are ok, inside cab and engine bay. Even if the timing was off it should still spark, that would only change when it sparks.

Ok, so I went to the dealer and gave them the run down on whats happening and his thought was that the PCM is bad. There are a lot of part numbers for PCM's of this car and unfortunately mine is the one no longer available and cheapest I've found online is $700. I'm not done trouble shooting this thing yet, we're going to test the wire harness to see if it's even sending signal to the coil and if it isn't pull the PCM and see if we can either see anything blown on the circuit board and if it's repairable. My friend is really good with electronics and programming, it's his job, in case some of you are wondering why I'd let him attempt such a thing lol. A question I have for those of you out there who have dabbled in this stuff is are all of these PCMs the same circuit board with interchangeable chips and/or jumpers to make them vehicle specific? Or are the circuit boards in the PCM's designed differently with different chip set layouts making them absolutely not interchangeable?

im not sure exactly what you're asking but i do know if you grab a PCM from another MSP, plug it in and it'll work.

boostdprotegelx said:

im not sure exactly what you're asking but i do know if you grab a PCM from another MSP, plug it in and it'll work.

Click to expand...

Ok, I heard that getting PCM's for these cars was extremely difficult. The dealer said that my PCM for my VIN was discontinued and can no longer be ordered. There are several part numbers for PCM's that go to MSP's which is why I asked all that jazz before which was probably really confusing I apologize. Buying one brand new is still possible but they are $700 on sale, over $1000 normally. I've put a lot into this thing already and funds are low now so that's a no go. I could probably handle getting one used though, if it turns out to be bad. Is it common for PCM's to go bad on these things? I still haven't figured out why there's no spark. I tried changing the crank pos sensor, didn't work.

I wouldn't say common, but it happens surely. Definitely if you can get a friend to borrow one, or buy one used, shouldn't cost more than like 150.00 i think.

That'll at least get one thing answered.