Club 80-90 Forums

Hi, I have the read the wiki honest!

Having just spent 3 months on the body work of my mercifully almost rust free westy joker 1988 2.1 dj came to start it, lots of white smoke stalling not running. Put in 5litres of petrol, changed fuel filter which following the arrow needed to be the other way round?

Starts on the button without accelerator runs for 5 secs stalls. No idle, wet fouled plugs strong smell of petrol. Won't run.

Things I've done, (the last time this happened!), new Hall sender/grey box/ thermotime switch/ checked ECU/box behind lights with a spare. Cleaned Earths though doing them again. This time will use vaseline.

Cleaned plugs, checked resistance on plug leads all the same +/- 30, new distributor and rotor arm. Checked resistance and voltages from main ECU connector, injectors a bit higher than Bentley but not much.

Changed the blue one will do again but something is so wrong that the car just won't run. Maybe a lead? There is a grey white that enters the black box back left and emerges black not attached? Should the dizzy spade connector have a wire? Checked another 2.1 seems not.

Any ideas? I think if I had any it would run on LPG with no problems!!

Thanks.

Do you mean it fires up and stalls straight away or idles for 5 seconds (which is long enough to say it idles)? I ask because it's an odd length of time to run for. If it fired then stopped again after a second I'd say it's bad connection to afm (no air flow value to ecu = no fuel) or ignition amp to ecu (no spark timing signal so no injection at all). Either way it would fire up on ecu's default startup injection, and then just stop. Is that what's happening?
And do you have lpg fitted, then? If so it's unlikely to be so empty that it won't tick over on it. Have you tried it?
And no, the dizzy spade doesn't have anything attached to it, it's for the shrouded and earthed dizzy cap (from the days of AM radios with ignition interference).
Things I'd do first (based on the wet plugs clue - most likely loss of spark):
Bypass idle stabiliser control box (between coil and ignition amp) by joining plugs together (maybe the one you call grey box? Also see black and cream ones).
Try different ignition amp.
Then come back here with results and we'll take it from there if no joy.

Thanks for getting back to me, a voice from the darkness.
OK update.
I've been looking at Bentley (pg numbers) and going through the tests albeit jumping about a bit between the models. To be honest I'm doing the tests without fully understanding the reasoning or the results!

Plugs were put in clean yesterday dry and sooty today after less than a minutes idling in total. (Please forget the wet bit for now) It does run for a few seconds before stalling and smells strongly of petrol.
Then seems flooded. The longest was with the thermo time switch at the thermostat housing unplugged?

Incidentally between bouts of flawless behaviour there have been bad bits. A sparking king lead 2 years ago caused 2 explosions in two AFM's bending the flaps. The new one has functioned perfectly for 2
years until now and has never been messed with.
Timing too was set a year ago and seemed good.

Following your advice bypassed the Idle stabiliser box no difference.
Checked coil (aftermarket 2 years old) bolted in gave 2880 -ve terminal and centre/0.76 ohms -ve and +ve.
Original Bosch not bolted in gave 7750/0.75 ohms seemingly too much secondary resistance ( hence the aftermarket one) though numbers seemed to drift around a lot on both.

Moved on to Hall control unit lead gave battery voltage between terminals 4 and 2.

checked resistance in rotor (pg 28.31)
checked resistance in king lead (pg 28.31) 1910
checked plug leads (pg28.31) all about the same 5700 ohms

checked Hall sender (pg28.43) voltage across lead 11.43V

checked coil - to +ve/ Ignition ON DIDN'T SEE 2V minimum (pg 28.14)
grounded middle of lead at dizzy to block whist measuring -ve to +ve at coil with Ignition ON (pg 28.44) and fuel pump ran??? Is that right?
Not sure about voltage rise. I don't think so.

Doesn't run on LPG fumes either. The last time 2 years ago same symptoms rough spluttery on petrol not so bad on gas hence all the new bits. (Actually everything replaced or checked with known good one apart from dizzy)

Hall controller/AFM/Leads/rotor/cap/Idle stabiliser box/plugs/Coil/thermotime switch all new then. In the end a garage cleaned the plugs and it worked faultlessly for 2 years????? Grrrr!

thermotime 11 checked against graph seems good.

What next do you think?







.

Well I'm assuming that by thermotime switch (?- isn't such a thing on a dj) you mean the blue temp2 sender. A fault there would probably just mean raised revs when hot, as happens when unplugged.
Sounds like running massively rich. Could be faulty ecu. Had one in that ran terribly (very rich) until swapped ecu then ran like a dream.

Is this any good to you? It has helped a layman like me to understand a bit better how Digijet works.

http://www.vanagonauts.com/files/Digijet_FI.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks so much for the pearls of wisdom. Yes it was I think! Anyway it really helps to know that others have been through the teeth gnashing and emerged victorious.
I think/hope I'm getting my head round this now? We'll see tomorrow when the last one Heritage had in stock turns up.In the meantime just to make sure I have understood……

Big healthy spark from holding removed centre cap king lead to block when cranking, lots of petrol but now doesn't run at all not even the 5 secs. I'm presuming this is because there is no spark at the plug. Otherwise it would have to at least try, right?

The sparks instructions are supposed to come from the Hall generator in the dizzy which can't be relaying the 'spark now' message back to the coil to connect with the instructions to send petrol to the injector which I can hear when I touch a wire from the middle dizzy lead to earth.

Sooo if the ECU is telling the fuel pump to send fuel but the coil isn't sending sparks to the cap even though it can, the culprit has to be the Hall generator in the dizzy for not generating the spark demand, which after 350,000 km probably isn't all that surprising.

Incidently in days of old I would have just pulled a plug and reconnected to a lead and held it near the block to see if there was a spark.

Is this verboten with an injection car? Why isn't it in Bentley as step one or two after checking the king lead?

When the van had the same symptoms 2 years ago it would run for 9 seconds before stopping. Then 5 now nothing. Not sure if I'm alone in that.

Fingers crossed for the morning delivery.

Thanks again

Simon

Simon

did you get to the bottom of this problem? i have the same symptoms...

thanks

Alex

Hi Alex, sorry didn't see your post. I knackered the original dizzy trying to replace hall sender. Sourced a second hand one which worked straight away.
Did you sort yours?

Finally got round to replacing the hall sender. Started first turn of the key and is running fine. Thanks to all who offered advice over the period.

Alex