Hey guys,

I am new to the forum and was hoping you could help me figure out why my car will not start. I purchased a 1993 nissan sentra SE-R with a manual transmission about a month ago and the car was not running. The guy i bought the car from had replaced the original sr20de motor with a different SR20DE motor out of an automatic 1993 g20. (I believe those are the p10 models). The swap looked as if it were done some what correctly. What has me stumped is that i feel i have taken the right steps to get this car started and it cranks but just won't start. I have checked spark, fuel pressure (can hear the pump prime also), compression, timing and all are within spec of the factory service manual, i have replaced the distributor itself, the cap and the rotor, new plugs and wires also. The motor turns over and sounds fine also. When the car cranks i can smell gas and can see gas at the top of all the cylinders through the spark plug hole so maybe im missing something with spark and the plugs arent igniting??

One thing that kind of concerns me also is that there are a lot of plugs in the engine bay that dont go anywhere. I looked through the factory service manual and most of them seem to be options that the Infiniti motor had that the nissan motor didnt. It looks as if the harness he used was the p10 harness instead of the b13 harness. One plug comes from the starter and has a jumper wire the loops right back into itself?? When i take that jumper wire out the car will not even crank at all.

I know im probably asking a lot but i would really appreciate if you all had any advice, places to start looking, etc. Thanks guys in advance and have a great day

Walker

Check the crank shaft sensor, and probably the replaced engine has some issues with the valves not closing/opening properly.

Anything i can do to double check the valces are opening and closing? I can freely turn the engine over with a spanner? Anything else i can try?

And i will try the crankshaft position sensor too and let you know what happens

first what i would do is hook up a timing light, there should be timing marks on the flywheel and a fixed pointer near the flywheel should reference this in a service manual. for instance the 2002 sentra i have there are 6 marks on the flywheel the second from the left is the one that lines up. not sure about the cam timing , probably an interference engine so if it was way off there would have been bent valves. don't know if you could get the motor 180° out of phase and it would still turn over just not run. if it were me i would make sure #1 piston or whichever is on its compression stroke when the pointer on the flywheel lines up. also do a compression test