Hey fellas,

2g, 1995, 237kms...

I have been battling this problem for a while – essentially whenever I get on the gas I get this popping noise and complete loss of power from the vehicle. I would almost describe it as a jarring/stuttering type of engine hesitation. I have had my mechanic look over the vehicle and he figures the fuel system, intake charge, internals etc are all fine – he thinks it has to be something to do with the ignition system or the small capacitors gone in the ecu??? I use MSD wires, NGK copper plugs (had Iridiums but the car ran like ****), battery is still good I and just replaced the alternator. I guess that leaves the ignition coil/pack (whatever the hell it is on our cars), but is there a test I can use? The only other thing I can think of is the wires may be arcing and/or gone due to the excessive heat produced by the exhaust manifold (heat shield was taken off to fit the HKS external w/g).

In an unrelated problem my ABS light is now permanently on – is there a common fix for this?

Cheers,

Michael

Not sure if this will help in the diagnosis but here is my car including mod list (on page two);

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/823311/1

Where's the boost get to when this happens?
Is it a violent loss of power? Could be fuel cut.
First of all, do a boost leak test.

Just a thought but maybe an IC pipe is loose?

I am fairly certain the IC pipes are tight - if anything it would be a leak at the TB (o-rings).

Anyway to test the coil?

Any idea on the ABS light?

Really, the only way to know for sure is to do a proper boost leak test.
Tight != sealed.

This test is easier than going over every ignition component, so you could potentially save yourself a lot of time by doing it first.

well I remember last time I had to rig up a special fitting for the turbo inlet (20g) but I lost the damn thing!!

Could be a cracked plug. I had the exact same thing happen to me and it was because of that. They were new plugs too. Use some old ones sitting around or borrow some that you know work and go for a spin and see if it helps. It's a cheap fix if it is the problem.

BTW: Nice car!

That happened to my car last year. I find that my spark plug gap is way too big.

Well I wanted to say thanks for all the replies. It turns out the plugs were fouled from burning oil, so they could never spark properly. I replaced them with some NGK BPR7ES but my mechanic says I might want to go to something hotter to try an burn off the oil as it collects (BPR5ES) - any feedback on this idea??

As an aside - I am noticing a large difference in RPMs between my tach and my SAFC. The discrepency gets larger the higher I get in RPMs (up to about a 1500rpm difference)???

Re. the SAFC, you probably have the wrong cylinder setting.

Sorry Rob - do you remember how one goes about changing the cylinder setting?

ETC Menu, Car Select

http://www.roadraceengineering.com/newafcsetting.htm
Read near the bottom, they say you should set it to 2cyl.

my tach and safc tend to read about 50-100 rpm difference some times...someone said to try changing it to 2 cyl mode as it's a wasted spark ignition system, but that was even further off...

as for your hesitation, my car sputtered a bit when I was running to rich, tuned some fuel out of it and it was a lot smoother...