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Re: Intermittant misfire

To: merk!alliant!british-cars@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (local-british-cars)
Subject: Re: Intermittant misfire
From: uunet!dri.com!dambrose@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (David Ambrose)
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 90 19:03:34 GMT
In article <9009262213.AA07816@coventry.com> ssi!coventry!rmb@ames.arc.nasa.gov 
(Keptin Komrade Dr. Bobwrench III) writes:
>       As those on the autox mailing list already know, I'm having
>a problem that I cannot diagnose.
>
>       When the car is warm, (standard temp, 1/4 the way up the gauge)
>adn I am travelling at speed (50-90) the engine misfires and sounds like
>it is only running on 3 cylinders. At first I thought it was either the
>plug wires or the coil since the problem would go away when I wiped all of them
>down with a clean rag. But the problem kept coming back.
>
>       When I noticed it would run ok if I backed out of the throttle when it
>started happening, I thought was that it might be a stuck float valve. A
>quick whack on the carbs with a hammer made the problem go away temporarily.
>(it seems to come and go of it's own accord.) The next day however, the
>problem could not be solved with any amount of wailing for more than 3 or 4
>minutes.  And of course, spare float valves were 160 miles away in the garage.
>
        I went through this a while back.  It turned out that some person
had simply twisted two of the wires in the ignition's low tension circuit
together.  When the engine would shake from extra throttle,  the circuit
would open and the engine started misfiring.  Backing off on the throttle
cured it until the next time.  Finally,  the connection got _so_ bad that I
was able to diagnose the problem.  I'd also look at the connection at the
distributor and make sure the push-on connector is nice and tight there.  I
had to look under innocent looking electrical tape to find my problem spot.
If you fix the connection,  solder it and use heat-shrink tubing over the
solder joint.



-- 
Play it cool;  play it cool;  fifty-fifty fire and ice -- Joni Mitchell
David L. Ambrose, --  Digital Research, Inc          ...!uunet!drivax!dambrose
         Don't blame DRI.  They wouldn't approve of this anyway.


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