I will disclaim this and say that my main vehicles are Fords and always have been for no particular reason.

Girlfriend has a 96

I’ve done minor work on my girlfriend’s Galant, did the oil pan, changed her distributor O-Ring, IACV assembly (don’t remember how I determined that was problematic earlier) and other small stuff.

The other day she had a crank with no start situation. I checked the usual suspects, air filter, blew out the MAF with cleaner.

I jumped to a conclusion that it was fuel related so I changed the fuel filter and fuel pump, easy enough to get to. Then I learned the pump only runs when it cranks so lol free unnecessary pump upgrade woo!

Checked for spark good spark. New plugs and battery anyway cause she needed it. Checked resistances on all the injectors. Checked the rail. Fuel regulator hose dry.

Then I checked the injector connectors with a test light whilst cranking and determined that they are not actually pulsing. To double check this and because at this point I was getting super annoyed I actually disconnected the whole rail and had it crank and low and behold no injector pulses.

So what makes the injector go. I had a distributor from another 7G from that O Ring situation so I threw that one in there thinking maybe a Cam Sensor but NOGO.

Then I found in the manual that the CKP also controls injector firing. I don’t really feel like getting the timing cover off so I backprobed the visible parts of the connector. There is good ground, good power, and it does pull a signal with a frequency tester when cranking... I don’t know what the signal should be in Hz though so that could still be the culprit.

Then I saw others talk about PCM and I thought to try and check for CEL codes with my OBD tester.

So I plug the OBD in and it cuts on instantly, connect my phone (it’s one of those, cheap but it works).... but it wont connect to the ‘ecu’ with the key on.

Now it has worked on this car before but I only remember doing it with the engine on maybe? I quickly go check my other vehicles and it works.

I try a bunch of different settings and I cant get the ecu to connect to the OBD reader. Unfortunately its the only reader I have access to.

Could the OBD not connecting -and- the injectors not firing point to a PCM issue? If so how much of a PITA is changing the PCM out? Is there something else like a ground point I should check?