Hello everyone. Ty for existing. I am by no means as certified,but generally I do okay. I got this camarCthat has been sitting for 2 years. It was acring cupbefore my nephew had a shop put an ignition switch in it. love and behold one without the correct resistors. I do not know how they got it running when they did this, but he drove it for a couple months after. However, The vats was not bypassed??? I bought 5he resistor kit from Amazon and went through 13 of them before I finally got it to crank. I double checked the resistor before and after the one that worked just to be sure. Still no fire. I thought crank sensor. Well, this particular part is discontinued. It is a triangle about 2x2 with three wires about 7 inches long with a connecters on the other end. OreilO'Rei sent me the dang cam sensor instead because everyone is confused as to what it is I'm trying to order. Because it doesn't exist in their computer.. anywho, I replaced the cam sensor on the intake since I had it. And put it back together with the old crank sensor praying for the best. I got it to fire. But barely, she is missing and backfiring and won't hardly start and will not run. But there is fire. Will this engine run if I accidentally left the crank sensor unplugged? And if I did plug it in right, it couldn't have jumped time from sitting. What can cause this? Please help me. Ty for your time.

 

That car does have 2 crank sensors. If you are changing the same sensors repeatedly then something else is wrong. The pcm and distribution relay are awesome for having electrical issues and causing many things to give you trouble. The fan especially. That idle valve can do what you are experiencing. What else have you checked or changed? Are the coils firing strong enough? What about fuel pressure? Engine compression good? Vacuum leaks at all?

 

Also that car won't start without the crank sensor since it powers the fuel pump.

 

Fuel pump should power up before the engine starts cranking.

 

have you checked to see if that balancer has any play in it? those are known to give trouble also. that car wouldnt jump timing from sitting there. that timing chain could be stretched or a sprocket on the chain damaged. if you put the key forward, are you hearing that fuel pump making a whirring sound? fuel filter can cause a no start condition, the fuel pump relay may have trouble there. any time you are repeatedly changing sensors and especially the same one and nothing is changing, then the problem is something else. i have seen several of the 3.4 and 3.8 in those cars have intermittent fuel pump power but only a few times before it does not start at all, they can fail while driving or after a shut down and restart attempt.

 

the 24 x signal crank position sensor is mounted on the engine front cover and partially behind the vibration damper. it reads 24 positions on the crankshaft balancer for ignition control during cranking and idle control. the 3x crank sensor is on the right side of the block near mid engine near the crankshaft reluctor ring. both of these are halls effect type switches, each has one shared magnet magnet mounted between them. the magnet and hall effect switch are separated by an air gap. the vibration damper has specially designed blades or interrupter rings to create on off on pulses needed for timing. you must make sure that sensor does not contact the rotating interrupting rings or it will be damaged and the engine will shut down.
if the parts store isnt giving you the correct sensor due to not understanding what it is you are looking for, you can call a chevy dealer and gets a parts number from them. one thing to keep in mind about part stores, not all or many of the people who work there are mechanics. hope this helps

 

I've actually done an old school trick. Unplugged the cam sensor on top of the intake. Fired right up. I guess that reset the computer. After I started the car I let it run until temp. Then shut it. I plugged the cam sensor back in and it's been starting and running fine besides the overheating. The dang heater core is stopped up from sitting for 2 years. Originally I was talking about the crank sensor as the one that was discontinued. I just put the cam sensor in and put the old crank sensor on and hiped for the best. It worked so...idk

 

on the 95 ive got, i had some rusty heater lines that caused me a problem. i flushed it out and changed those lines. took care of that.

 

check with rock auto for parts, looks like they have crank sensor

 

Heat core should not cause over heating. If the system is holding pressure fine then there is a good chance that what every plugged the heater core also has plugged up a good part of the radiator. Its not uncommon to see the bottom 8" of the radiator plugged up with that mud looking Dex Cool. In some cases even flushing is not enough.