1993 240ax convertible cranks but won't start ... again

[hastybob]

I have a 1993, 24sx, convertible, about 230,000 miles. Almost all is still stock. About 4 months ago, I was driving home from work and stopped at a traffic light. When I start to go from the light, the car shut off (in traffic, of course) and refused to start. It turned over fine but no fire. I had it towed home and began working on it. I had done the timing chain replacement about 6-8 months before and put about 3000 miles on it. It ran completely fine and in fact, only a few min before it cut off, I had it up to 90mph. I had recently replaced the injectors (helped the idle greatly), fuel filter, fuel lines and a few other small things.

Since it stopped running, I have replaced the distributor, rotor, entire distributor, coil, power transistor, checked for proper spark and fuel. The ECU is giving code 21. We checked for grounds - all o.k. Rechecked timing chain had not somehow jumped - not. I have even had a couple of friends who are mechanics help out on this but no luck.

Finally, decided to do a compression test. Since it was cold, the pressures ran a bit low in the 130lbs range. Checked again after adding a couple of squirts of oil and it came up about 5-10 lbs on all cylinders. After finishing and replacing the plugs, we decided to try cranking. And, guess what - it started! Ran really rough and really sluggish. Cranked it a couple of times and adjusted to distributor and with it all the way clockwise, it would finally idle. Rechecked the compression and it came up nicely to about 170lbs. I cranked it a few times over the next couple of days and even drive it to the end of the street to turn around. It had very little power but still ran. I figure that when putting the new distributor in, we got it off a tooth. I planned this last weekend to put a timing light on it and try to get the timing back where it should be. We were going to crank it and see how far off it was before starting. Guess what? No start again. Tried a couple of times. It is again giving code 21. The only thing I had done was pull the coil wire and barely crank it over to get to the timing marks. It probably didn't even go over one time.

I have pulled to neg. battery cable and left it for the last couple of days hoping the ECU would reset, but I don't have much hope. I have even thought of putting oil in the cylinders again like we did when doing the compression test just to see if that had anything to do with it.

OK - here is where I need help. Any help would be great! It is getting fuel, firing, and, of course has air.... Nothing has changed.
I am thinking ECU now! Everything else I changed in the past has helped but this is a much larger expense. I'll do it if I know it would help.

Who has had this and who can help.


Thanks,

Bob