Just a little tip to all the GSL-SE owners out there.
It's a good idea to always keep a good spare ignitor and a screwdriver in your car.
The carb'd guys can drive home with only leading ignition no problem if one of their ignitors goes, but as it turns out, the -SE will not.

The fuel injector pulse is signaled by the trailing coil (same as the Tach). So if you loose the trailing ignitior, you're stuck... unless you want to try limping home on trailing only, in which case swap the leading ignitor over

Happened to me last night that the trailing died, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why there was no fuel getting to the engine. The pump was fine. The AFM was fine. There was gas in the tank, and the car fired up using a can of starting fluid. But NADA from the injectors. Left me stuck about 15 minute from home on a rural road

This morning I attacked the problem. I knew the trailing wasn't working, but I thought that was un-related.
15 mins of searching here yielded the rather useful info that the trailing triggers the injectors. A quick ignitor swap later and the car fired right up

I'm keeping my spare in my toolbox from now on.

 

Good advice. But if this happens to you again or to anyone else, the quickest way around it is to move the blue spade connector from the trailing (-) over to the leading (-). This will cause the injectors to run off the leading ignition. This will get you home with no problems and will get you around until you can fix the problem. Glad that you got it fixed.

Kent

 

Damnit... never even crossed my mind, lol!

 

Are the both ignitors the same? Mine have different part numbers on them.

The car died on the way home 2 days ago so I just switched the spade connector over. It ran fine the rest of the day and yesterday until I was coming home from work.

It started bogging down and the engine would die at anything past part throttle. Today I was messing around with them and the switched the ignitors but the car wouldnt run of either the trailing or leading coil. Im kinda stumped other than I probably need new ignitors.


Any suggestions or the like would be appreciated.

Thanks
Greg

 

There is a J109 and J105, The 105 was on the 80 model cars.

 

smnc's advice is true for all S3 models, since the trailing ignitor signals the fuel pump relay. Unless you get rid of the relay and install a switch instead.