Disconnected battery - now 02 wont start...

Hi -

Started to take a look at my sickly 02 today and discoverd that it is my no.3 cylinder that has a fault (not sure what yet) but leaving the other 3 spark plugs in had the engine running as well as you could expect.

I decided to try an old spark plug in cylinder 3, just to test it wasn't the plug itself at fault and after putting everything back together and re-attaching the battery it wouldn't start at all! This is even after it fired up and started okay just a short time before.

Does disconnecting the battery mean I need to reset anything? Everything seemed to be going in the right direction but now I can't think why it's not even running on 3 cylinders...

Oops - forgot to say - when i ran it on originally on 3 cylinders i only ran it for about 2 seconds before switching the ignition off.....

No reason at all what are you saying it wont crank over no lights just totally dead ??????

02as in year or 02 as in model is it a single can engine and did you only remove cilinder 3 plug/lead/coil
You say i wont start but is it turnng over but not firing

it's the 02 sof-top model - SOHC - it turns over but just wont seem to fire.

I've charged the battery - it's pretty ancient but even fully charged made no difference with the engine spinning over but no sign of any ignition.

The only change I can see is that I tried a different spark plug in no. 3 cylinder and that was it.

*So* frustrating - I'd narrowed down my engine fault to 3rd cylinder - but now someone's moved the goal posts!!

One day ago you said cylinder 4 went and you had a noise my be the engine is totaled

Yeah - thought it was 4 but got to take things apart today - the spark plug in 3 looked a bit messed-up so I thought to do some further investigation. Reckoned that if I put things back together with no spark plug in that cylinder and everything ran as before (i.e. on only three cylinders) then I'd tracked down which cylinder was giving the issues.

This turned out to be be the correct assumption as (originally) the engine fired-up and ran on the other three.

I'm obviously going to need to delve further and doubtless have the cylinder head off for the original issue but I just wondered if there was any obvious reason why I shouldn't be firing at all now, seeing as the only thing I think I've done is disconnect the battery between times and try a spare spark-plug - just wondered if anything needed 're-setting' or if the various sensors get upset when you start and immediately switch the ignition off again...