Was driving a buddy around and while accelerating up a hill, it died. His Bluetooth OBD2 scanner picked up a malfunction from the camshaft position sensor. We went and got another one, put it on and still no start. It acts like it wants to, and it'll sputter and sometimes start, only to die right away. When I had the cap off, the rotor and call both looked fine. Nothing corroded, nothing fragmented. It appears to be getting fuel and spark, but no start.
Any help with the issue would be greatly appreciated.

1999 Oldsmobile Bravada 4300

 

Your camshaft sensor is in your distributor. Your crank sensor is on the bottom of your timing cover.
To remove the cam sensor you will need a t20 and t15 torx bit. If you replaced what is in the pictures then you did the correct repair.
Also set your engine to TDC after doing this repair to make sure you have everything correct.

 

I did replace that, and it still won't start. Do I need to replace the crank sensor as well? His scanner only said the cmp, not the ckp.

 

Almost sounds like ur fuel pump died.

 

Jeese, sorry bout that, holy tomoly frickin new stuf!! I used to work on things that had points and condensors!!

 

It's getting fuel, just not firing enough to stay running longer than a second.

 

Do fuel pump testing on sticky at the top of this forum and report (don't shortcut any of the tests or do just the easy ones). report all 4

Engine will run with cam sensor unplugged so forget that as a cause of your no start.

If coil has spark then your crank sensor is fine and you can forget that too.

 

I agree with Les. Check fuel pressure and leakdown, and post all 4 readings. Cam sensor will not cause a no start condition, and if the coil spark will jump a half inch gap while cranking, crank sensor is NOT the problem. Possibly a bad distributor cap & rotor, Use AC Delco only.

 

Very true a bad cam sensor will only cause your tachometer to not work. You need air, fuel, spark, and correct timing for your vehicle to run. Have you checked your ICM.

 

All cam sensor does is to identify to the PCM which cylinder is firing. This is used as a reference for both misfire detection and for timing of fuel injector pulses in sequential fuel injection. If you unplug the cam sensor, misfire detection is disabled, the fuel injection defaults to pulsing 2 banks of injectors (instead of individually), and the SES light is turned on with the appropriate code stored. It should be noted that having the SES light on for a particular code means that other things also go into a limp in mode (for example TCC cutch can be disabled and many other things as well depending on the code), but the engine should still run and not miss with a bad cam sensor. However, this is one of the reasons why engines with pending codes or SES light on get poor mileage.

From a practical standpoint the cam sensor signal can also be used to set the distributor so the rotor points exactly at the correct cylinder whenever the PCM decides to fire the coil. If the cam retard setting is right, then from how the distributor is built the rotor is pointing where it should be.

If there is spark at the coil, the ICM is good.

Do the tests previously indicated and report back please. We can go from there.