1993 945T Woes

Hey guys, really need some help with something. I drove my 1993 940 turbo wagon to work this morning - nothing unusual about the ride in, until I got the parking lot at work. I put the car in park, and it seemed to be idling high (1500rpms), and then it just instantly died. The car will no longer start. It turns over, and turns over, but doesn't start.

Some of the back story - last weekend, the car went on a 3-day hiatus of not starting with no spark. Everything appeared to be working fine, except there was no spark from the coil, even though the coil was getting power. As a last ditch effort to get it started, I traced the red/white wire from the coil all the way back to the instrument panel where it plugs into the 8-pin connector at the back of the tach. I wiggled this connector around and the car started right up.

Fast forward to today, about 4 days later, the car is again dead. My question is, what would cause this connector to keep coming loose or making poor contact? Is there a way to "tighten" the connector to the instrument panel, or is the entire panel itself on the fritz and causing the issue? Any help would be great, I'm going to try to get this fixed enough to drive home after work in the freezing cold dark, but would love to take care of it permanently.

The wire running to the instrument cluster is your tach readout signal. If it's not working it won't affect how the car runs at all. That is unless there is a short dragging the signal down. You need to get out a DVM or a test light and start tracing the signal. The red white wire is the output from the ignition amp on the left inner fender. Check that output and see if it's switching. If it's not then move to the input and check with the meter for the switching signal input. If it's not there. Verify the wiring and then all that is left is the EZK or the crank position sensor. If you have the input switching to the ignition amp but no output. Then the ignition amp may have failed or there could be corrosion on the connector since it's near the battery.

The crank position sensor is quite common as a failure and the EZK boxes do fail on occasion. BTW you can disconnect the red/white wire from the dash and the car will run fine.

No spark AND no fuel injector pulse= crank sensor suspect.

JUST NO SPARK= power stage suspect

After looking at the car in the parking lot at work, I found one of the engine harnesses to be complete junk. The bullet connectors were basically completely loose on the female side of the connector which houses the blue and red/white wires that go to both coil leads, as well as the ground for the power stage and both knock sensor wires.

I was able to "wiggle" the connector and the car started right up. I drove it home, and while it was idling, I touched the connector again and it stalled immediately.

For now, I pushed the female side of the bullet connectors thru the plastic harness connector, and connected them to their male counterparts on the male connector side, and then slid the plastic connector back over them and clicked it in. The car has been running fine since, and for a more permanent fix I was able to order a new connector with wires from Dave Barton.

Although, would it be better/is there any con to just cutting the plastic harness connectors out of the car all together and wiring the wires directly together? Just trying to think about why these harness connectors exist in the first place, when it seems like all they can do is make things worse.

Nothing wrong with deleting the connectors and splicing the wires together.

They were built that way (with connectors) for ease of assembly.

If you do that, make sure to do them one at a time.