Well, the car made it fine, no problems whatsoever, drove it the next day I arrived, ran great. However, the next day I went to start it and it seemed a bit hesitant at idle, it then missed a little here and there and eventually dropped a cylinder.

I popped the hood and checked the engine, I see a little bit of coolant leaking out of the heater tube fitting in the water pump, seems the fitting came loose and is wiggling a little bit. So anyway, I covered the fitting area with some shop towels, hopefully that will hold the water.

So I go for a drive, no missing for like 10 minutes of driving, then all of a sudden it drops a cylinder again... it does this everytime I have driven it, once it warms up (the hottest my car runs is (170 degrees) it runs it drops a cylinder and misses in and out, when its starts up its fine. I'm thinking the coolant worked its way into the optispark, but when the optispark goes out, it just progressivly gets worse and worse doesn't it?

I don't think its the opti for that reason, it will run fine, and then **** itself and drop just one cylinder. I know its missing spark because I can smell the raw fuel when it misses... the only other thing I can think of is a burned plug wire, but they all check out fine, or a coil on the way out.

My last "hypothesis" of this situation is that when the car sits, the coolant isn't flowing and any coolant that got on those rags near the opti dries out from engine heat so there's no moisture dripping on the opti and 2,4,6, and 8 opti terminals... but when its starts running, coolant is leaking out of that heater hose fitting and soaking the rags and dripping on the opti etc. etc.

Any help would be appreciated, I was supposed to be 500 miles north from San Diego earlier today, however I'll prolly be stuck here for the next few days or so trying to figure this out.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks
Adam
925-323-1709 if your in the SD area and can help out.

 

Can you tighten that fitting for starters?

 

Unfortunatly no, its a pressed in fitting, so tomorrow I'm going to take off the water pump and seal and JB weld all the fittings on the water pump.

Its a cheaper fix than a whole new opti setup, all I will need are some gaskets, coolant, distilled water, JB Weld and RTV sealant, if that doens't work, I'm only out like $20.00.

I got a call from a guy that made me really think about triple checking those plug wires just one more time, I know the drivers side is checked ok, but the 6 and the 8 I really want to check.

Any other inputs? Perhaps on the coil?

Thanks people, much appreciated.

 

You know, it could still be your opti.

For me, when I had badly crimped plug wires that I did a crappy job on, driving through a puddle in the rain would get my car missing and stuttering. And after about 15 minutes, the missing goes away.

The moisture really f*cks up the opti. But once it dries out, the opti is fine.

I'm guessing your waterpump is going out and leaking coolant onto the opti, causing the misses. Once you let the car sit, the coolant stops leaking, opti dries up, and it drievs fine for about 10 minutes until the engine gets hot, and the waterpump starts dribbling again.

Just my 2 cents. Hope you get it worked out man. I once got stranded in livermore, driving from berkeley to LA. The coil wire popped off and didn't work anymore. Luckily, I had a crimper in my car (don't nkow why), so I was able to crimp myself a new coil wire and limp the car home.

 

Just outta curiosty, whats the LSA on your cam?

 

mineral water, I'm thinking something like that because it becomes worse and worse.

However I just took the car out for a little spin and it was running great for about 5-10min then it started to crap out, however I changed the shop rags and they didn't even get wet.

Can a burned wire work for a little bit and then start to crap itself?

Or what about the coil going out?

I'm gonna just fix the water pump tomorrow, since I really have no way of removing that damn hub and it will be at least until Monday till that optispark gets here if I'm lucky, so I got time to experiment.

Black94mula: The LSA on my cam is 112, those dyno numbers could be much better if my tranny wasn't slipping and with a new fuel pump. For whatever reason, my injectors are maxed out and still not providing enough fuel so I'm thinking I'm down on fuel up top.

 

what condition is the sparkplugs ? mine did d\same thing would run for 10 mins then stazrt missing but that was b/c origanal plugs where in my 72,000 mile 94 z .

 

So it gets worse when it warms up? Any way to scan it? I'm no expert but you may want to consider a heat related issue if it only does it when it is warm... PCM....?

 

It made it home! Ran on 6 cylinders the whole way, got 18mpg @ 90mph in the automatic... man, these things can take a beating, time for a new rear end though.

Well I took a look underneath it, pulled all the plug wires again, found out the wires were burned from heat transfer. My fiberglass boots, rated to like 2000 degrees are in perfect condition, the wire underneath it however is a different story, the heat transfer from that alone killed the plug wires. I guess it's time for OVC wires.

I'm gonna drain the coolant and JB weld all the fittings on the water pump while I'm at it just for added insurance, hopefully the optispark is fine despite all of this. The problem didn't get any worse, just it continued to run like crap the whole way.

OH MAN! I forgot to mention I was stuck in Los Angeles traffic for freaking 3 hours yesterday driving this thing, I thought I was going to get stuck there, the car made it through, hauled *** up and down the Grapevine, and made it home in about 4 hours from Los Angeles! Yes I was going pretty quick.

Thank God for this luck, hopefully those OVC wires will solve my burned wire problem as this is the 3rd incident I have had.

After this, I'll pull the tranny and fix that front seal, change the oil pan gasket, new rear end, fuel pump, another dyno tune and its up for sale again. I'll sell it without those fixes to anyone making a decent offer.


OH YEAH! THANKS EVERYONE FOR YOUR INPUT!

 

i take it you dont like LA parking lots, i mean freeways

i bet when you came out of the grapevine, and entered the long stretch of road, thats when the throttle opend up more

congrats on finding the problem

 

Yeah LA is just so scenic too

Well I was actually doing about 95+ up the grapevine following a guy in a Mercedes and a Mitsubishi, my RPM's were at a good point where it wouldn't miss as bad so I just kept in it.