This is a good one for the experts. Drove car to work, no prob. After work drove to market, no prob. After that drove home no prob. Parked and unloaded groceries. (yea i really did that). After a little while, went to start it and move it into garage for oil change. Cranked fine but no start. WTF. Has to be fuel or spark, right? Put FP gage on fuel rail, pressure came up but not fully, maybe like 20psi. Fuel tank was low, and reserve lite was on. Trying to run it down, old gas, want to put E0 in. Car was parked on slight gradient. So i added some fuel to tank, FP came up more, to like 40 but no fire. Eventually killed battery.
Next put charger/booster on bat. Cranked very well, but no fire. Then had bright idea of hooking timing lite up, to see if have spark on a plug wire. Cords were long enough so i could hold lite and look at it while cranking. (manual trans, so gotta push clutch). Timing light flashed in my face and after a few sec it fired right up! What did I do??? i cannot figure it out. Was it the low fuel in tank? I did reset the ECM, but i dont think that did anything. When i get the oil change done, will fill it right up with fresh fuel.

 

From the fact that FP came right up after adding fuel, that's my guess.

 

The fact that it was on a grade and the battery was dying then maybe you couldn't get it to spin fast enough to the required oil pressure to allow it to fire. The grade wouldn't have anything to do with it unless it was steep enough to let the oil move away from the sump. The dying battery is the hint I believe and it likely took a while to get the system back to pressure. The low fuel certainly was likely the original cause.

 

It was the timing light repair clamp!

 

Yep, that was it!! LOL, who knows. With my battery booster/charger, it did spin over good, and build pressure up better. But it was only AFTER i hooked the timing lite up that it did start! WTF,!?
I will get back into it sat, finish oil change and get some fresh fuel in it. I am going for Valero E0 91 octane.

 

Well i dont think my no start was fuel related. Today, finished up oil change and some other little things. Car started fine, backed it out of garage and looked underneath the rear for some grease fittings on the rear tie-rod ends, but could not find them. then after a while drove down the hill into town, for fuel fillup. Put in just under 17 gal of E0 91 octane. And yes the reserve lite came on again. I am pretty sure they hold 20 gal.
Next decided to drive around the long way to home, then decided to stop by an old friends place for a visit. After about an hour, i finaly got out of there, backed down his driveway, out to a private roadway, and stalled it. re-started fine, but going down another private road it died on me. pulled over to the side, and it cranked good but no fire. Same as before, but now i got a full tank of fuel in it. So then i started to freak out. I was only about 1/4 mile away from my buddys house. Popped hood and looked around, just guessing. More cranking but no fire, and bat starting to get weak. What to do. Then decided to check battery wires and hot wires behind the bat, jiggling them. Also wiggled a few dist wires. Cranked slower but fired right up. Got the hood down and tried to get home as quick as possible. It did burp as I was going to down the road shifting gears. But got home safe and in my garage.

I am now wondering about the +bat wire to the dist. I think that is 12 v ignition feed, for powering things in dist. Maybe i got a bad connection there, and it wigs out when engine is hot? I certainly had all them wires off when i did all this work recently. I am getting more nervous with this car! What do you think?