1999 Dodge Stratus ES - "NO BUS" ???

[wcaldwell]

Daughter has our old 1999 Stratus ES with about 160K miles. She went out to go to work this morning and started the car. It immediately died and gave the message of "NO BUS". What does this mean and what do I do to fix it?





Thanks for any and all help.



Wayne

 

[OKish]

??? what the heck? maybe it broke down and its telling you that there is no bus route in your neighborhood and shes outta luck?

no, really. its saying its having trouble communicating between computer modules in the car. i would check all visible gounds at the battery, clean all the connections and leave the battery unplugged for a good 5 minutes or so. also check all the fuses for the pcm, there might also be a 'bus' fuse too. let me know what happens.

 

[wcaldwell]

I went over and pulled all fuses & relays that had anything to do with the car running and replaced them with the same type/size from my truck - no luck. I'm thinking possibly the distributor since I wasn't getting any spark from the wire to the front motor mount. I took the only metal I had - a pair of tweezers and put them in the spark plug wire and held it so the tweezers would have caused an ark if there had been any 'fire'. There wasn't any.



Car cranks really well - but won't start. I figure there's three things needed to make an engine run - fuel, air, fire. Other than a totally plugged filter (and it isn't), we have the air. I could smell the fuel. There wasn't any 'fire' (spark). Now, why not? I don't want to just throw parts at it when it could be something fairly simple. That's why I started with the relays & fuses. I'll try the grounds and see what happens tomorrow after work.



Thanks muches... ... .....



Wayne

 

[TBurow]

what engine do you have in that car? usually a dhorted crank sensor will kill power to the bus line if it has one i would unplug it ans see if the message goes away

 

[Crash_AF]

Your ECU is bad. I had a 99 Durango that did the exact same thing. Engine would die and all of the gauges (including speedo and tach) would freeze in place. Turn off ignition and turn back on and the cluster would reset but it would crank/no start.

My Durango was an intermittent failure, it would come and go but in the end I had to replace the ECU.

Later,
Joe

 

[wcaldwell]

Thanks for the replies. Engine is the Mitsu 2. 5 V6 (wonderful, powerful, smooth, efficient engine). In 150K miles, this is the first problem (other than replacing the alternator a couple years ago. I'll try the ECU and the crank sensor. I just don't want to be throwing parts at this thing trying to get it running again.



Thanks again,



Wayne

 

[TBurow]

you dont have to replace the crank sensor to check if it is the problem, just unplug it and turn the key on and see if the message is gone. if it is you found your problem. you can also unplug the distributor if that doesnt fix the problem.

 

[wcaldwell]

When the car died, it immediately showed the "No Bus". My daughter tried to re-start the car and since then there have been no messages and no codes flashed in the instrument cluster/odometer.



Thanks again for all the suggestions/replies.



Wayne

 

[wcaldwell]

Figured I'd start throwing parts at it today. Distributor, rotor, & cap. $265. It runs... Oo. But what a PITA. #@$%!



Thanks again for all the suggestions.



Wayne