I was driving home the other night and I noticed that my '86 seemed to bog down a little. I kept driving and my low coolant light came one several times for about 20 miles. Afterward my temp went up pretty fast so I turned on the heater to see if it helped. It did, but a little later it surged a bit again. Also, the car really started to cut out and almost go dead a few times {no red lights, highway} finally I decied to pull into a gas station and it went dead and wouldn't start. What I've done so far. New fuel pump and filter, new coil. It has good fuel pressure and the injectors are working. It did start by spraying ether into the intake, but now it wont. The plugs/wires and relay are all pretty new. My father is going to try taking out the distributer and replacing the pickup and module. Anything I might be missing. No codes either. Thanks in advance.

 

Reset ECM by pulling the fuse or neg (-)terminal. for 30 sec's
Rehook up and try. If still nothing I'm thinking bad ECM. It's a local part about 100-150.00

Tip.... NO MORE STARTER FLUID... BAD....
Jeff

 

Your problem sounds really scarry from what your saying. It sounds like you lost all your coolant and ran very hot. This may have caused you to loose compression. I hope your lucky and didn't get that hot. If you lost all of your coolant, you won't get an accurate temp reading since the sensor wasn't submurged. The side seals in those radiators are bad about failing and they will leak profusely when it happens. First thing I would do is either get it towed home or to a shop and do some preliminary checks, like "compression". I have seen engines get so hot that pistons will melt. There are a few other problems that will cause the coolant to get low over time. The burp tank can leak and or have a leak at the connection hose so that when the engine cools it will draw in air instead of the excess coolant. I had a head bolt stripped from the factory and allowed a headgasket to fail. This caused me to loose coolant and the low coolant indicator will go on and off intermittently. The car starting with ether and then stalling is a symptom of very weak compression. If the car will start at all, you know your distributer is working. Before you start complicating your issued, just check the compression to confirm whether you have reasonable compression or not. After that you should move to the other obvious things that are necessary for the car to run. Good luck, I hope you didn't do too much damage, but there is a good possibility that you have a mess there. It may be time for that engine soop up mod. Good luck, let us know what you find.

 

Well,when the temp surged it went from about 181 to 187. Never got that hot or so the gauge said. I have never smelled any collant before while running or off and have never noticed any leaks. The car has 85k on it right now. I mentioned to my dad that the computer might be the culprit, but he is a little hard headed when it comes to my advice. I have proved him wrong before when we were working on my '82!!

 

Yeah, 180-190 in not hot.These things like to run 220-230.
Your dad's not hard headed he's just "old school" Just try the ECM. The more I think about it the more I think ECM.
Unless anyone else has something

PS.. Tell Dad AIR-FUEL-SPARK your missing one of those. The ECM controls spark. Then again so does the dist-mod.