Club 80-90 Forums

Last trip of the year on the way home today - just made it.

The van is running like poo. 1.9 dg watercooled

The symptoms are.

When cold starts fine but will not idle with out keeping foot on the accelerator - normally flat to the floor.

keep pumping it for five minutes then it starts to rev as normal.

When driving loud backfiring - a few flames out the exhaust - lack of power when accelerating more loud bangs and flames.

When you accelerate it the revs rise then then get to a point then it starts the backfires and the power goes flat.

The exhaust has a couple of small holes and is a empi twin back box - I've heard these are bad exhausts.


Any ideas where to start.

Could be timing, nip out and check if your destributor has slackened off for some unknown reason. just grab it and see if it turns round, first thing i would check. if still tight then move on to other things like making sure leads are pushed well onto plugs etc. Its a start.

Full service.....leads, plugs, etc

Rotor arms seem to be a nightmare at the moment....mine had new leads, plugs, cap and arm to ensure an incident free holiday...hahahahahahahahahahahahaha


Got to RTTH, started missing on way to Northants......backfired spectacularly and coasted to a layby on a14. Quick text to mocki....stripped coil and ignition thingy from other van to check (as new leads, rotor etc etc). No difference. Opened shiney cap....full of grey dust inside. Cleaned. Started up ran ok.....then started missing and backfiring again.......coasted to stop on side of dual carriageway. Rotor arm loose. Called AA who thumped it down quite hard. Ran ok to Northants. Replaced both the following morning. The rotor arm had disintegrated. In the centre of the replacement rotor was a brass (?) place that makes contact with the central pin in the dizzy cap....this had gone completely - dunno how it made any contact at all. Bits of rotor arm all over the place - testiment to the forgiving nature of these beasts that it got the remaining 30 miles to parents at Northants.

Rn fine with replacement items rest of holiday, though. Shall be looking at regular like, as this is the second time a rotor arm has gone on me!

Good luck putting it right!

Em
x