I just bought an 89 cherokee,auto,4.0 for three hundred bucks. The guy i purchased it from said it died on him and he could not figure it out. The jeep cranks but no start. It has no spark from the coil. I have replaced the coil,module,sensor on the trans with all new parts. The old crank position sensor wires were arced out and burt. The main negative wire from the batt was also bad. So I replaced both the pos and neg from battery to starter/ground. I have looked around all the wires look good but no spark?? I am going to get a new distributer/cap/rotor tomorrow after that I am lost.. Any Ideas would be much appreciated. The guy i bought it from was flakey so i couldnt get much out of him on past issues.

 

Done a compression test?

 

Sorry, the reason to jump to a new distributer is because i found a rusty one laying under the passenger seat. So the old owner might have replaced it with a junkyard special. I wanna have a good starting point to base the troubleshooting from. I am new to jeeps. I just medically retired fro the army and now live in CA. I bought the jeep fro 300 for a project my daughter and i could do. She love going off road with me. No I just need to get it to start. Thank you in advance any help is better than were i sit now.

 

No. Actually i found the no spark thing and stupidly was like this is easy to fix and i bought it. I will tomorrow morning.

 

What is decent compression? I read earlier some guy had like 115-110 thru most cylinders? Mine has 186,000 miles on it.

 

Good compression is anything 120-150,anything above that is even better.

 

so i had only 60 at each. The jeep has been sitting for atleast a month without starting. Would that low of compression cause the no spark issue? I am still thinking electrical issues.

 

Your screwed.

Your engine is at half the minimum required. No compression=no combustion.

 

screwed? I am only still troubleshooting it because like I said i bought it and do not know the history. I did find a junkyard distributer under the seat. So i did not know if they even put it in correctly. I did put a new one in and found TDC. plus cap rotor and wires. I did the checks and still no spark.. Would the very low compression cause the spark issue? I will test the compression again now that i know the timing is correct and distributer works. I also did the distributer test. I have no voltage going to the voltage....It is driving me cr4azy..I did find the crank position sensor that bas burnt up so i replaced it..could it not be reading the flywheel therefore not allowing the spark? Sorry so many questions I have a no quit problem from the military that gets me sometimes. I am mechanically enclined but not advanced enough to figure this out.

 

Anyhing under 100 ain't gonna fire.

 

Could be the crank sensor. I found this the other day searching. The wire on mine has worn through and every once and a while my jeep will turn over and not start but if I wiggle the wire it will start.
http://www.go.jeep-xj.info/HowtoCPSchange.htm
"if it detects no signal from it but the ignition is turned on, it will assume something has happened like a car accident and shut off the fuel and spark for safety reasons. The problem is that when the sensor starts to fail, you get no spark or fuel so it will either not start, or suddenly without warning, stop the engine while it is running"