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Topics - jcassity

17
Engine Tech / spark loss while driving - SOLVED
hello all!!!!!!!

87 20th anny Coug 345k miles all stock

symptom.
- while driving engine will shut down.
-no loss of power to the IP, clock, warning indicators or speedo or elsewhere during the event of engine stop.  There is no warning of hesitation,, not bucking prior to the event,, no odd "feels" to speak of.  Its like someone just unplugged the car from the outllet,, it simply goes quiet in the cabin except for any accessory i may have on.   My tach does got to zero though (the 87 20th is the full digi cluster for those who dont know.
-I can not while coasting simply go to N and restart.
-I must coast over to the side, put car in P,,, turn Ign sw off then restart which it does each time.
-I do need to confirm if my fuel pump relay is loosing its trigger sig from the EEC or its high current contact power delivery,,, but i dont think so.  The fuel rail does not seem to "sound" like its repriming when i turn the key from off to forward again,, trust me i know what that sounds like.

troubleshooting....
-yesterday i confirmed something.  I coasted to the side of the road, put car in P, kept the ign sw in the run pos, popped the hood and removed the coil spark plug wire.  I reached into the car and rotated the Key Sw from run to start and as the motor is turning over , the coil is not sparking to the car or anywhere.   If i rotate the ign sw to the off pos then crank, sparks fly everywhere.  So.... i put the coil plug wire back on and start up and go about my day.  This is hapening without regard to engine temp, moisture outside, outside temp or anything,,, its just random and seems as though it only happens once or twice during a driving period of time.
**Simply put,,,, engine spark will remain absent until i rotate the key sw back to the OFF pos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-while driving i have beat the hell out of the steering col , inst cluster as well as wiggle tested harnesses within reach and no results.

Comments.............
A few months back i noticed that when i first start the car up, i can not tune into any AM stations for my regular Glenn Beck,, Rush L or Hanity shows.   The signal is totally washed out by engine noise ,, not static or anything ,, just a constant whine high pitch.   Eventually over the course of 15 or so min, the signal is  clear enough to listen to but ,,,, its like only 70% there with 30% engine noise.
Normally when i have an intermittent what appears to be electrical issues, i tune into an AM station with KeyON Eng OFF or KeyON Eng Running and perform wiggle tests on various connections while listening for voltage / current static induced by my interrupting any possible bad connections.  This helps me quickly narrow down particular circuits that otherwise an EVTM may not as quickly reveal.

So.. the reason i bring this up..............
Yesterday when i started my short trip,, my radio was acting up as it normally does but soon the AM band cleared up for the most part.  When i had my loss of spark,,,,, and did my prior mentioned test...... when i got restarted instantly,, the radio AM station was back to 100% washed out by engine whine or noise.  It soon cleared up again.


Final thought...........................
My son's 88 5.0L bird is doing the exact same thing.

Conclusion.....
Although i have not pulled codes yet,,, what i am starting to think is that perhaps my computer has reached the end of its life or is getting there. ,, or Maybe that diode that appears near the coil is faulty and is over clocking an EEC chip or over charging one of the 3 electrolytic caps on the EEC PCB,, or ...... nevermind.


SO,,,
thoughts on this very odd problem which simply fixes itself ??????????????
18
Misc Tech / phosphoric acid
purchase a gal of "food grade concentrated phosphoric" acid from amazon for around 45$ on a gallon.

do up 25% phos  75%water.

with little wire brush effort on rusted area, spray on and walk away.

im done doing anything else to rust, this stuff saves the day.

i blew through a gallon of it quick like spraying everything  could, now i have my second gallon to use for general purpose things.

this stuff is less hazardous as Muriatic  & Hydrochloric acid.

additionally, 10% phosphoric acide and 90% water kills weeds and keeps them down most of the summer.
19
Other Vehicles / 70 Karmann Ghia BODY ON floor pan resto and interior
we've got about 2300$ in the interior rework all in boxes ready to install but have body work to do.
its not all that bad but the typical day at the office for any VW fan.  this is the wifes daily driver we are working on.
once the inside is done along with interior color change, i will move on to exterior painting.

here is my youtube channel... on this car .

If and when you get to part 6,, i have a couple tech questions that are going to need addressed prior to wrapping up the inside.

i think with a full body rubber kit (thats what they call it) for 600$ and paint stuff at around 500$.. that should call it a wrap for this shade tree mech resto work. 
I am taking my first crack at phosphoric acid being used as a rust remover so i will be testing that out and posting the results.
The price point on "food grade" phosphoric acid is much better and since we are going to need to reduce it,,, i may end up with 2 gallons of somewhat safe to handle rust dissolving agent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G-dzci8G58


20
Lounge / notifications this new board shows
I come to the site
i look at new notifications.....  ok ,, i get it now.. the notifications is saying people have comments to a thead of mine.
Its a useless feature if you ask me... however....

i go to my thread
i read the comments and move on.

i keep on seeing new notifications pertaining to a thread i already viewed.

it appears this new board is set up where you have to manually acknowledge each individual notification by not going to the thread but you must go to a different tab called notifications to make it stop.

seems features like this are likely tied to facebook or something.....?

if we we are expected tolerate the fact that 66.6% of all information from nearly  a 1/4 of a century  and  over 2 thousand years of combined knowledge become missing,, the moving parts we have now should not be in error to this level of simplicity.  If i read a thread, my notifications should "self manage",, thats why we went to all this new social media platform,, right..?  its supposed to be superior to everything else.

What we have now is a board with words... and no supporting substance.
22
Suspension/Steering / Rear quad shocks for our cars
I may have just learned something everyone else already knew but..........

if you have quad shocks out back.............
and you want to replace those shorter horizontal ones......................

when you have your parts person look them up,,, tell them to look under "steering dampener"

and like magic, the correct rear small shocks for quad shock applications appear.

they should now show up with a slightly more sensible description,, like "axle dampener"



23
Electrical Tech / eec question
this post ties to my current problem with an 88bird as a contengency.

car is set up with mass air, 24lb inj. and automatic

if we suspect our EEC is bad,, couldnt we ask for a 93gt eec A9p which was set up for 24lb injectors?

last i checked,, this eec has a calif and non calf pn...

any info on that,,, i recall the calif version is an a9c or a9ca



24
Electrical Tech / 88 Bird intermittent engine shut down***SOLVED
88tbird Maf, A9P  306, 21lb inj, GT40 heads, Professional products Upper & lower.
car has hi/low beam mod where when the hi beams are seleted the low beams remain on.
Car runs a lot of led conversion lighting in either bulbs or led lighting strips along the bottoms of the doors... which are off when the doors are closed.


Issue--
while at speed, the engine will shut down for a time frame of less than a second to a max of a couple seconds then recover.
This situation is more re-occurring or "more  pr0nounced" during cooler days and / or during the time frame of the first t-stat cooling exchange.

Visual / feel symptoms--
The tachometer drops to zero rpm, all other gauges remain online and within normal visual expectations.
The symptom can be "forced to happen" if extra heavy loads are added to the alternator such as hi-beams. 
This may be misleading because the key is still on so if the EEC shuts down, the coil will loose its ref ground yet other cluster items will still be powered "on" since the Alt is getting input signal and producing voltage because the belt is spinning.
the overall misleading affect is that the Tach is the only thing that reacts during the event.

We are into researching what the issue is for nearly all of 2019.
the car is a daily driver and is my son's car which with work and little time off, it limits progress but slowly we eliminate probable faults.................

Troubleshooting---
pulled codes,,,, we had ....
18  - gone now that tfi harness is fixed
91 & 95 - still remains

after codes are dumped, we proceed with cylinder balance test and passed.

We found that if with the most lightest of touch, if you moved the TFI harness, the symptom occurs.............
>> purchased from LMR a TFI harness repair kit and retested.
replacement of the above did not cure the issue.

Replaced Dizzy as a whole kit from one of the box stores...... did not fix the issue.

-did fuel pres test while driving and gauge taped to windshield.. pres was low"ish" during low RPM's and around high"ish" during high rpm's like 40 or so.
-kept fuel pres tester connected while the car was off and parked, several hours later the pressure finally arrived at zero... like 7 hours or more.

we began to shotgun troubleshoot,, cause really we dont know here else to go other than REPLACE THE FUEL PUMP which has not been done yet.

we replaced the dizzy, dizzy harness, coil, plugs, wires, ECT, ACT, Alternator, Battery, Ign sw, i ign sw harness from LMR, O2 sensors, replaced EEC capacitors, EEC relay, added grounds to the engine bay, cleaned the MAF,

we are looking at replacing the EEC and the fuel pump  next up.

I have recommended to Mason (my son the owner whom is out of state), to do the following .....
Pull every friggin fuse not required to make the car run and retest. Even if this means he has to drive with emergency flashers on as a safety step on public roads.
If we are lucky enough to find the symptom is gone, this lets us insert fuses back into the car until the issue comes back which then tells us which ckt is a probable fault.
if the symptom remains, it tells us what remaining ckts to focus on.

Help anyone??????????????????

Scott
304 772 3411

25
Electrical Tech / manual heater control mod rev4 is this still valid?
has anyone but one person we know of used this to modify their heater controls?

this was researched and solved because one of our members here listed on the drawing noticed the blower speed switch was discoloring and looking to be in bad shape.

we designed this mod around the 97 explorer manual heater system which has slave relays for both the speed switch and the blower motor.


I am attaching the before and after shots to help illustrate things.
26
Electrical Tech / what purpose does these circuits serve
I think i asked this question nearly a decade ago,,, i cant remember the answer......



1987 EVTM

page 42- 3.8L start / IGN = near C403 there is a circuit ID #16 which is red/lt green.  what purpose does this wire serve?
page 43- 5.0L start / IGN = circuit ID #16 red/light green,  what purpose does fuse link "P" serve?

in both instances what i am trying to understand is.... you have a jumper "wire" bypassing another "wire".??????
28
Lounge / engine oil lab report
built my oldest sons motor a few years ago,, did an oil lab test to see what it comes back with.

the only thing i know to do is to snug the head bolts down a smidge....

there are no coolant lines on the TB ,,,, so...


but i guess overall its not a bad report for like 45k miles so far

see attahched
29
Electrical Tech / buttstuffog clock
was the buttstuffog clock an 82/83 thing only?

i notice in an 84 evtm i have , the wiring for an buttstuffog clock is not an option,, meaning its not in the index,, only "digital clock"

for the record, i have an 84 evtm and buttstuffog clock i have no use for if someone else does.

thanks!
30
Lounge / stove fan
i bought one of those "heat powered" stove fans you simply set atop your wood stove,, the heat off the stove causes an isolated electronics part to generate power because of it.  i know ,,, sounds like magic stuff in a bottle but read on,,, these things are real and im sure someone here will be getting a few for christmas.

inside of one use ,  i burned it up so i went on an exploration mission to determine what i had done wrong.

i had to learn about a product i had no knowledge of its existence. 

the gizmo that converts heat into electricity is something call a Peltier effect.  this tech is not that old and still kinda in its trial and error stages of engineering applications although you find them randomly on some high end cooling and de-humidification systems.

there are two types...
TEC- thermal electric cooler

TEG- thermal electric generator

the TEC has a lower withstand point in deg F than a TEG.

they both actually do a somewhat similar job but are designed a smidge differently,, yet each has its own application.
the tec has a lower output voltage as well so in my mind started to arrive at basic conclusions.

Come to find out the stove fan came equipped from the maker "Voda" with a TEC.

I took the bugger apart to understand what kind of electric motor drives the fan blade and discovered its a brush motor and it seemed to be ok with a 9v battery source, i did not put 12v on it figuring i was pressing my luck being i knew this motor design was never expecting to see any voltage higher than 5vdc when the TEC or TEG was on max.


Back pedal here a tad..
the TEC is 1/8'' thick by 1.5'' x 1.5'' device with a red and black wire hanging off it.

I researched out where i could find TEG's and there are mil-spec opitions, industrial options, then there are hobby options so i shot out an order to china for some cheapy renditions to tinker with... got a dozen of them on ebay for under 2$ ea.
 
I tossed out my defective one then installed 2 TEG in series thinking i would double my voltage potential which the results yielded a great operating fan.

these are very interesting units because all you have to do is have one side get warm while the other side stays at a different or ideally "lower temp by way of a mounted heat sync... if you do this the two wires will put out voltage and current proportional with the temperature difference the unit is experiencing.  ~~ cool stuff eh???

here is a vid i did real quick.........  i mispoke in the vid,, i think the TEG can go well over 200degF

https://www.dropbox.com/s/usc7p8ec801pzcp/VID_20181126_203747.mp4?dl=0