DinoAIDS

My cousin's 1999 gs300 was running fine before she stopped using it for a few days. Now we have crank no start issue with little sputtering like it wants to start. I sprayed some starter fluid in it and on the third crank after spraying the car sputtered harder than before.
Checked fuses (all good), no codes (we used a very cheapo one from harbor freight), checked fuel pump (by listening to it, it is making some whizzing noises), checked battery (AutoZone said it was fine), security light turns off when key is in. Spark plugs tester is on its way so I haven't tested for spark but when I removed one of the wires, it was soaked in oil. Also, we took it to a shop before it started acting up for state and emissions and the flagged an O2 sensor. We haven't replaced it yet, but I don't know if that would cause all this.
Any help is appreciated. I am tempted to order a new fuel pump but I don't know for sure if that's the issue as it is making noises.
Thanks 😊

Edit: I got it started by aggressively pumping the gas and cranking it. It took about 5 tried but it's running now. Is this normal if they car hasn't been running for a week?

Yri

Right there is probably your issue, an oil soaked spark plug wire. Happens to the best of us, the valve cover gaskets go bad and they begin to drain oil into the sparkplug containment area. It can and probably will foul the wires and the coils, not so much the sparkplug itself though. If the car is misfiring, however, it will certainly have codes and will act very strange.

dwoods801

U certainly want to get any serious maintenance issues taken care of, at a minimum u could go to a wrecking yard and find another 300 and get the plug wires and coils for pennies on the dollar, but I think they’d have to be really bad to cause a no start issue before giving a misfire code. It’s much more likely that the fuel pump is weak. I have the V8, and I can’t recall if the 6 has a shader valve on the fuel rail to check fuel pressure. It looks like the valve stem on a tire, and u can rent a gauge from AutoZone to check the fuel pressure. But the fuel pump isn’t too hard to replace or too expensive. And they certainly can get weak but still make noise. I would start there, make sure u have fuel on the fuel rail, then check the spark. I bought a cheap spark tester that just connects to a spark plug and then to a spark plug wire, and when u crank it over, it has a light that shows if your getting power to the spark plug, if u fuel and spark, check the MAF sensor, maybe it it died and it’s not detecting air flow of something like that. But most likely a fuel or spark issue.