Here begins the saga which I'll keep brief. I started my 86 maxima one day after work, it idled for about 2 minutes and died. A mechanic friend of mine isolated the problem to the ignition control module, or the ignition coil. He was able to wiggle some wires and get it running enough for about a quarter mile of driving, but it would die again. He got spark, so he assumed the ignition module had a bad wire, so I replaced it...

That didn't get me anywhere. With the old coil and new control module, I could crank the engine repeatedly and after about 50 or so tries, it would idle very rough, and die within a second or two. I read online that the secondary winding of the ignition coil was probably bad, so I checked the resistance and it did not appear to be within parameters, so I ordered a new ignition coil...

I replaced the ignition coil, and voila! The engine starts. The problem now is that it will idle for about a minute or two, then sputter, then the idle RPM's will drop to about 600....then it will die about 30 seconds later. I have to wait about a minute before the car will start again. It starts, and the same thing happens over again. I've tried this about 15 times not knowing if maybe the battery was dead, or the coil needed to break in, or something else wierd.

I checked all my spark plug wires to make sure the boots were on tightly. I did have the distributor cap off briefly, but I made sure to label the wires and put them back in the proper order...

When it's running, before it dies, the idle sounds very good, so I'm pretty sure it's getting good spark and firing in the proper order.

Does anyone have ANY ideas what could be causing it to die now?

 

It has been sitting for a while (probably about 6 weeks). I find that I can *almost* get it to start if I pump the gas pedal as I crank it...

The fuel pump definitely works, as it's flooding when I crank it for too long.

 

It is probably an issue with worn valve seats sticking. I had an earlier model Pulsar and it had this very issue. I would drive it 50 meters up the road on a cold morning and it would just stall. It took about 5 months to find the problem. I have to look for an auto parts store online just to replace the parts.