Logic defying non-starting - fixed!

[vanzep]

Thats good news
you can buy the ignition module - i think eurocarparts are selling them for around £20 or kawa has a few old dizzy parts for sale

[alinton]

So it was the distributor, but not the ignition module. Most likely the cam position sensor - I was getting spark but not at the right time. When trying to start the car would cough occasionally as a spark happened to occur in roughly the right time.

The position sensor doesn't seem replaceable, and not really wanting to risk paying 60 quid for a second hand one which might fail tomorrow, I got a brand new distributor from a crowd called UAD, on EBay, for £85. Perfect.

There's a bloke down the road from me who does tuning on cars for drifting and rallying. I got him to do the timing (he has a computer which connects to the Lude's diagnostic port and reads errors and sets various things - you really have to put the ecu into a particular mode to do the timing) and he revealed that he used to work on these engines a lot, knows them inside out.

Interestingly, it turns out that in order to get my car to perform ok, the timing needs to be advanced too far. He says people often used to do this as a quick and dirty way of increasing low torque, but at the expense of higher rev torque, if other things were limiting the performance. It's not the right thing to do.

He says a couple of hours' work on it, setting tappets, clearing breathers, tuning etc will make huge improvements, and is going to do it for me next week.

Can't wait for the results!

[vanzep]

yep you have to jump the service connector to do the timing - i guess thats what your mechanic is referring to
let us know how it runs after he has done the clearances etc

[alinton]

Well, he didn't jump it, he had his computer plugged into it, and it asked him for the VIN, then was telling him to do various things, like press the brake pedal, turn engine off, turn ign on, start engine etc. It came up with a few logged faults, timing out of range for example.

Then he was able to put the engine into a mode to set the timing, by entering a command on the computer.

I drive the car today - with the timing set at the required amount it was very sluggish. On his instruction i advanced it a little and then it performed well, but obviously not right as the timing was then advanced beyond what it should be.

I'll certainly report back after the job is done.

[alinton]

Well my expert had the car for a day, he reset the tappets which he said were all over the place, looking like someone had been at them previously who didn't know what they were doing.

He also cleaned out breathers, fixed a vacuum leak, set timing, set idle speed. He said there was a lot of oily sludge in the top of the engine, the result he thinks of using cheap oil of the wrong viscosity.

He also replaced the seals at the bottom of the plug wells that had gone, and allowed 2 of the plug wells to fill with oil.

The result? The car pulls much better at low and high revs, previously it was good at low revs because a previous owner had advanced the timing too much, to the detriment of high revs. When the vtec cuts in there's much more of a jolt to the back!

And the engine sounds much smoother.

My next job is a new exhaust, I knew it was blowing a bit but he says one could strain cabbage through it!

And a decat at the same time, I think.

Nice results!

[wurlycorner]

Good to hear.
It's amazing the difference that properly setting up the basics on an engine will make

Sold my de-cat, but still have a (LOUD!) exhaust available

[alinton]

Indeed, especially when I was relatively happy with the performance before! Oh, the innocence of ignorance!

Details of exhaust please!