2.5L ('98-'01) 1998, 2.5l Crank, No start

[eosters94]

Hi all! I’m 19, and new to diagnostics. This is my first post on the forum, so forgive me if this already has been touched on in the past, but I’m really trying to get my baby back on the road

Sequence of events so far:
-Driving down the road, WOT and the engine cuts and dies
-Crank, No Start on the side of the road, will fire on Ether
- I replaced my fuel filter(Just a quick first guess)
- Get it towed to a shop, and they won’t work on it due to age, but they diagnosed it as a fuel pump
- I replace the fuel pump, no change
- I check timing and spark, both good
- I find that if I jump the power across the FP relay, and the fuel pump runs, then check power and ground at the ECU, and find both to be good. (I checked the Inertia Switch, and jumped it, and no change)
- I figure an ECU is easy and fairly cheap for these trucks, so I ordered one, and it came in today. Same thing, crank no start, and no Check engine light.
- Then I get my dad to help, and it fires off on ether, same as before, but acts like it’s out of time(which again, it isn’t)
- While cranking, I change the relay for a known good relay, and it clicks, but still no start, and very low pressure at the rail
- So I know these things
Good IAC, Good Inertia switch, Good ECU, Good fuel pump(runs when jumped over the relay), I get spark, and it sometimes fires off then dies on ether.

I may have forgotten a fee things, because it’s been a few weeks since all this started, but please, can someone HELP!

 

[scotts90ranger]

Dumbest thing that I've come up with that comes up a lot is timing belt being broken. When you said it's in time do you mean you lined up TDC on the crankshaft and pulled the cap on the timing cover and verified the other two timing marks are lined up? Timing belt look loose when you look through the hole. And when aligning the cam pulley and aux pulley one lines up with a diamond and the other with a triangle which conveniently matches the shapes on the timing cover but you need to make sure they're the right shapes because both pulleys have both shapes...

From there I might suspect the MAF but that's hard to troubleshoot when not running unless there's a trouble code.

 

[eosters94]

Dumbest thing that I've come up with that comes up a lot is timing belt being broken. When you said it's in time do you mean you lined up TDC on the crankshaft and pulled the cap on the timing cover and verified the other two timing marks are lined up? Timing belt look loose when you look through the hole. And when aligning the cam pulley and aux pulley one lines up with a diamond and the other with a triangle which conveniently matches the shapes on the timing cover but you need to make sure they're the right shapes because both pulleys have both shapes...

From there I might suspect the MAF but that's hard to troubleshoot when not running unless there's a trouble code.

Yes, I took the timing cover off, and verified that all the marks are good. That was probably the third thing I tried, because symptoms do point to a jump in time. As for the MAF, is there a test I can do to verify functionality?

 

[scotts90ranger]

Any trouble codes with an OBD II reader? That's where I would start from here at least on the MAF.

Unfortunately it's sounding like a wiring issue but I'm not sure of which one... unless the crank sensor died which isn't too common on the '95-01 sensor but does happen...

 

[eosters94]

I haven’t checked with an OBD, but I recently noticed a melted looking section of the harness on the hot side of the engine, right above the manifold. That section looks like it controls the Crank sensor, MAF, EGR solenoid, and coolant temperature sensor, so I might dig into that and see if there are any shorts from a melted wire insulation