Deleted.
Replace the plug wires.
Okay it’s running again, but I’m not sure what happened.
I put in a couple more gallons of gas, performed a visual inspection and replaced the filter. Turned the key to pre start - heard the fuel pump priming, fired her up, revs, dies… Tried a few more times and it won’t run.
Returned later to do another visual inspection, remove air filter housing, check clips houses, scratch head, okay let’s pull the codes. Removed front seat, pull engine codes, no errors… Hmm okay… Let’s go into live diagnosis mode, start engine, to enter live diagnosis Started her up and to my surprise doesn’t die, just keeps running. Ha, okay!
Still the soft purring putt, putting misfire but I’ll do a compression check and vacuum test next.
Replacing wires cap and rotor as suggested. Test electronics with a multimeter
Might as well replace the fuel filter and run a bottle of injector cleaner through it too. The engine is fuel injected but mass fuel injected at the throttle body. Fingers crossed its not bad rings or something more troublesome.
Fingers crossed its not bad rings or something more troublesome.
At this point I seriously doubt it could be rings. The more you get into this…the more it seems fuel related.
Why would a constant miss on one cylinder of a throttle body injected engine be fuel related?
Why would a constant miss on one cylinder of a throttle body injected engine be fuel related?
Who said it was misfiring on one cylinder?? Miss fire may only be occurring one cylinder at a time…but not necessarily the same cylinder.
The original problem was the miss but the problem being discussed most was the failure to run. Hopefully it now runs so that the miss can be worked on. I’m starting to wonder though if there isn’t an intermittent fuel delivery issue? Something like maybe the pump is bad and not running all the time or maybe even the computer is not turning the pump on after the initial prime. Hope not though.
I’m not sure we really know much about the miss though, if its a single cylinder or multiple ones. A valve or something should give a dead miss though that’s pretty hard to miss (no pun intended). A weaker miss though to me would indicate electrical or even injector. Will stay tuned.
Correct. The original issue was the mysterious non-running, which is now a non issue.
Since the plugs looked old and gapped but otherwise alright I’m thinking it may not the kind of l miss that would let oil in. Also there were no engine codes for cylinder miss. I’m hoping for the best. Engine overhaul wouldn’t really be worth but a new injector ain’t cheap $350. I’m going to start running some diagnosis and throw so parts at it that should be changed anyway. Plugs wires, cap, rotor, filters. We’ll see tomorrow.
Maybe I should open a new thread for the misfire.
The thing is I have never ever had a bad injector and I’ve gone 200K, 300K, 500K and never a bad injector. Only once on a car with about 30K did I have one that needed cleaning and that was back in 87 before all the gas additives. I know it happens but it sure wouldn’t be the first thing I’d be looking at for a miss.
You can use a cheap noid light on the injectors to make sure they are getting power or you can unplug one at a time to see if they all cause a change in the engine idle.
I had a difficult to diagnose “won’t run” one time and it turned out to be that the fuel injection tests I had been doing had dumped a bunch of gasoline into the cylinders. So the engine was badly flooded. It pretty much doesn’t matter what you try, if the cylinders are saturated w/gas it isn’t going to start. I “fixed” it by accident. At the end of the day I had the spark plugs out, so I left them out overnight. The next AM I could smell gasoline, decided it was coming from the cylinders with the plugs out. So I cranked the engine over a few times with the plugs out, before re-installing the plugs. Started right up.
I think I could have figured this out earlier if I had paid more attention to the plug electrodes when I removed the plugs, they were probably wet with gasoline.
@GeorgeSanJose Maybe I flooded the engine or there is just too much fuel going to the engine. It does smells like raw fuel while under the hood while the engine is running and when it was failing.
@Bing - It’s just a single mass injector so only one. I looked in the throttle body and saw plenty of fuel. I’m glad to hear they don’t fail normally. I would imagine injectors outside the cylinders are even less likely to fail.
I noticed the intake fuel line has these two very thin spindly little power wires, these little wires run over a spark plug. It’s possible they got wiggled out of place when was doing the plugs. Then when I was checking the clips wiggled them back in place. Kind of a lame theory but plausible.
I tried to do a compression test but the tool I got is basically impossible to turn past a few rotations into the narrow plug wells. So I tried something else. Here’s a funny one… I started doing the “remove one plug and see if it runs worse diagnosis” but some of the plugs are hard to get to so I thought. “How about at the distr. cap…” I’ll let you guess what happened next. Lol.
I do see oil stain around the valve cover on right side of engine, not on left. I’m worried it could be a gasket. Wouldn’t the plugs be oil fouled though? Maybe a blow between cylinders? Or maybe just a bad valve cover gasket (fingers crossed)
My parts come in today. I’ll keep you posted on the miss fire diagnosis.
Single injector? Good luck with that. I know absolutely nothing about those systems except they are troublesome I believe.
the compression tester only screws in a few threads, and only by hand.
There is an “O” ring that seals the tool and it takes just hand tightening to have a good seal.
I’ll bet that you tried to swap out plug wires from the distributor cap and got a good shock???
THe plugs would not get oil fouled from a leaky valve cover gasket, but the oil and crud that washes down on a plug and plug wire could cause the spark to arch to ground…hence that plug does not fire.
Yosemite
Having more hindsight I’m pretty sure the it wouldn’t start because the engine was flooded. How it originally got flooded isn’t clear. But it would start today. Truck wouldn’t start after I worked on it and failed to start it after a few tries (I mixed up two wires). I left and returned in 1 hour. Started right up (after fixing the mixed up wires)
Thanks for the update OP. Glad to know you are back on the road.