This is my first official post on this most excellent of forums. Sweet! :crazy:

Anyway, here's the first of a few problems. I'll possibly post another topic or two on the others. The problem below is for a stock 1994 LT1 automatic. And I'll go ahead and say I scoured the forums and searched for similar topics, but I haven't seen anything just yet.

My car has been having power issues. Upon starting the engine, the engine tends to have little power. It can splutter and surge till it reaches about 3000 RPM, then surge with a lot of power till it shifts, and start it all over at lower RPMs. It continues this for a couple of minutes until the engine has warmed up some; naturally, I try to keep my foot off the gas while this is going on, but sometimes I get frustrated and just floor it anyway (I know, probably not smart on a cold engine). After it warms up, it runs fine. Occasionally on take-off, it stutters for a split second before power kicks in.

Four weeks ago, my dad and I replaced the spark plug wires (spark plugs were replaced maybe 30,000 miles ago). It was a bear to get to the left side as we had to dismount the compressor, alternator, and a couple of other things on the left side of the motor just to get to the bloomin' distributor (WHY was it placed on the front of the engine???). Before we did this, the engine would have the above symptoms to the extreme. After replacing the wires, the engine ran like brand new for a while, but it has recently begun its old habits again. The wire for cylinder 7 was actually burnt a bit on the end from not being connected well. We cleaned the distributor contacts as well as we could before putting the new ones on.

I'll need to check to see if the wires are trying to come loose or something, but I seriously doubt this is the case. We possibly did not clean up the distributor contacts well enough, but it ran just fine for the first couple of weeks like they were all making good contact.

I've heard that the water pump can leak onto the distributor and cause such a problem. Has anyone heard anything like this? I hate to think we'll need to replace the distributor and water pump because we also drained the coolant system and refilled it after we removed, cleaned, and rodded the radiator, but if that's what it needs then that's what it needs.

Any suggestions? Comments? Anyone ever had any similar problems before? TIA!!!!!!

 

Sounds like a bad Optispark to me. Mucho expensive, and you should replace the water pump while youre in there.

 

:cry :cry :cry

Oh well, I was afraid of as much. :nopity Any other thoughts? Please??? :lol:

 

Make sure wire terminals are pressed on all the way on plugs #6, #8. sometimes they seem like they are but they aren't.

Double check routing on each plug wire. make sure no wire is in direct contact with metal engine accessory without a plastic spiral wire sheath protector over it. This happens a lot in the tight area where the driver side wires have to route past the alternator brackett. Must have wire protector sheaths pulled up far enough so that the sheaths contact the metal not trhe soft silicon insulation of the wires. Also, the #8 and/or #6 wires have a tendency to want to touch the oil dipstick sheath if there's any slack in them. Don't let them. The oil dipstick sheath is bolted directly to the exhaust manifold and therefore probably gets HOT.

Check function of EGR valve and/or EGR solenoid. Both are cheap and easy to replace if necessary. $15 for solenoid, $45 or $50 for valve. If the car has a lot of miles, might not hurt to replace EGR valve anyhow.

Check for vacuum lines leaking. In particular, check the small black plastic vacuum tee under the passenger side fuel rail cover-- it connects some vacuum lines together and after about 30K miles can get brittle from the high heat location and begin to fail and leak air into the vacuum lines, one of which provides vacuum to the fuel pressure regulator. About a $3 part I think. Although it's called a tee it looks more like a cylinderical shape with a funnel end.

How long since fuel injectors cleaned?

How is your fuel pressure? (electric fuel pump may be going south)

How long since fuel filter changed?

These are just some things that popped into my head that you might investigate before dropping a wad of cash on a new opti and water pump.




[Modified by Lone Ranger, 5:20 PM 9/23/2002]

 

On the other hand, if the car ran like new for while after the plug and wire change it probably isn't fuel system related. Another cheap ignition system part to look at before opti is the coil. $39 for stock one. Have you watched for sparks along the ignition system components like coil and plug wires? Only works if engine is at operating temp (hot) and in darkness. my coil was bad. it was arcing slightly from the coil to the metal mount brackett. spritzing the coil with water mist from a pump spray bottle while the engine was running would slightly aggravate the situation, so I knew the coil had to be changed out at that point. Just some extra thoughts.