In the previous 6 months in attempts to keep this car free from failure I have replaced the EGR valve for lunging problems (worked fine after wards), new rotor, cap and wires and even the coil since the post pulled loose trying to remove the original coil wire. She drove it and said it was working pretty good. Then ...
Here's what my girl friend said was happening previous to this no start condition. She said that it started being difficult to start, it continued to get worse and it ran rough. Then it started to stall when it was running and not start up until it sat for hours. This progressed pretty rapidly until one time it died on the way for a short errand, They pushed it out of the way and got it started one more time to properly park it and that's when I got involved. I have never got it to start since then.
Here's what I found and tried since then. With a new charged battery (the old one was old and would die quickly when cranking and not getting a good charge) if I sprayed starting fluid in the throttle body it would start for a couple seconds, but it wouldn't stay running. I never smelled gas and I never heard any noises like it was trying to ignite any fuel. I didn't have a gas pressure gauge at the time and when pressing the schrader valve it showed the pump was as least trying to work. At this point I was convinced it was a bad pump and since it was parked at her house and "no car work allowed" area, I got her to drive another car until it got better weather and I could move it to a place where I could work on it. So 9 months later I finally replaced the Pump, the strainer, the filter, and the wiring harness for the pump (the wiring harness showed obvious heat damage, so I knew it was going to work again). I checked all the fuses and tried it again. Same old story basically, except it did orginally fire after cranking for a couple seconds, but it quit and has never fired again since then. I had a freind come over with a fuel gauge two days ago and we found it will charge the fuel lines to 55 psi with key on engine off and the pressure remains. I think it showed around 57 psi cranking. I'm not sure if the guage is calibrated, since I've read threads saying that it needs 58 psi minimum sometime on a cold engine. But if I understand this correctly, if it's just a little low and you spray starting fluid to get it running then the car will stay running if everything else is working okay. He also brought a code reader, but he had the wrong cartridge or something to read this old of a engine. But he did check that the pulses to the injector solenoid were present, he said that the PCM was getting it's necessary signals from sensors to approve the engine to start.
So given all this info, we are convinced the problem is under the plenum, but he wants me to hold off pulling it apart until he comes back with the proper part for the code reader to verify no error codes. I do know that there is no "check engine" lit up now, but I think it was lit up when I changed the battery 9 months ago. I could kick myself for not reading them first, but too late now. I'm going to check the injector solenoid resistance tomorrow for an open coil.
My main question is what will cause a new pump to only put out 55psi, does this mean the regulator is shunting all excessive pressure back through the return hose? And finally what's the chance that the pump was the problem and the old gas in the line has clogged all the poppets or the strainer in the spider assembly? I did drain the tank and put in fresh gas when I changed the pump. Thanks for your time and can't wait for good ideas.

 

If the red and blue wires attached to a plug located next to the oil fill assembly is the wires that attach to the fuel injector solenoid, then the solenoid is open and this is why this engine isn't getting any fuel. I think I've heard that this can only be replaced as an assembly (spider). I'm going to remove the plenum and hope I will find a bad wire connection. Can someone confirm that I'm looking at the right wire harness? Thanks Dan