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hard to say the flashing usually means a misfire, so if you haven't done the cap and rotor on the distributor in a long time then go ahead and get a new rotor at the least. you did say you changed the distributor so maybe you already did that. bad wires can also do that, if one is pinched or grounding out its kind of hard to tell.
it could even be something like an injector being leaky, the hard start would point to something like that but you said it went away... see if it does it again after letting it sit for a day then starting it. you did mention about the crush washers, what did you take the rail off for? might have something to do with that.
when the problem is that small its kind of hard to find it, but maybe start with resetting the ecu sometime if you haven't done that since changing the timing. pull the positive cable for like 20 seconds does the trick.
you could also have the early starting of a bad ecu, the symptoms sort of fit.. especially if its the original 92 ecu. if you park it outside it also seems to increase the chance of that.
Rotor and cap are brand new, less than 1,000 miles on them, rotor still looks pristine.
When I pulled the rail I had the injectors flowed, and cleaned, then re-installed everything, and got a brand new Fuel Pressure Regulator.
I had Tanin rebuild the ECU last august.
I reset the ECU maybe a week ago when I installed my new steering wheel.
Is there anything else I should consider? Could it possibly be the fuel pump or fuel filter may be dirty? I know I'm kind of just grabbing at hairs now, but I really want it to be running perfectly before I can start trusting it for longer drives.
I can definitely check the ignition wires and make sure they aren't pinched, I don't remember any being pinched when I did the spark plugs, and I'm usually pretty meticulous about that, but it certainly can't help to check.
if the rotor and cap are toyota parts I would say you are good on that one. I have personally gotten a new aftermarket one that was bad right away.
hopefully the place that cleaned the injectors did a good job.. things I can think of other than the injectors are the clips, obviously you removed some and put them back... often times they crack or if you dont push down hard enough they wont click into place. I would tripple check them and also make sure the rail wasn't hulked down too tight or it can mess with the injectors also. you should be able to turn each one a little left and right when tightened down, if they dont move at all being that tight one could have cracked.
fuel pressure regulator.. you mean a new stock one? then that should be ok, otherwise that could be part of the issue. tanin rebuilt ecu lets assume that is good also. I dont think it would be fuel pump or filter those should give issues more all the time but its possible I suppose.
also a compression issue could do it, but it wouldn't come and go so much, it would stick around and misfire quite a bit.
its definately a misfire, whats causing it will be tricky to diagnose especially since its obd1. there is no stored code right?
if the rotor and cap are toyota parts I would say you are good on that one. I have personally gotten a new aftermarket one that was bad right away.
hopefully the place that cleaned the injectors did a good job.. things I can think of other than the injectors are the clips, obviously you removed some and put them back... often times they crack or if you dont push down hard enough they wont click into place. I would tripple check them and also make sure the rail wasn't hulked down too tight or it can mess with the injectors also. you should be able to turn each one a little left and right when tightened down, if they dont move at all being that tight one could have cracked.
fuel pressure regulator.. you mean a new stock one? then that should be ok, otherwise that could be part of the issue. tanin rebuilt ecu lets assume that is good also. I dont think it would be fuel pump or filter those should give issues more all the time but its possible I suppose.
also a compression issue could do it, but it wouldn't come and go so much, it would stick around and misfire quite a bit.
its definately a misfire, whats causing it will be tricky to diagnose especially since its obd1. there is no stored code right?
Nope, no stored code.
The Fuel Pressure Regulator is stock from the dealer.
Injector clips are all good, I was actually surprised with myself, I managed not to break any of them when removing them, and they're all on solid. It took me a while to get the fuel rail lined up so all the injectors clicked into place, but they still rotate a little bit when twisted.
I'll keep snooping around the motor and see what I can figure out, I'm going to be replacing my high pressure power steering line in a week or so, so when I'm in there I'll definitely check everything again and see if anything stands out to me as a potential problem.
Problem came back, its running rough again, and there was some smoke smelling of fuel coming from the exhaust. The motor also started to run warmer than normal. It didn't overheat, but was just consistently running warmer like it was over the summer.
I'm starting to think I may have a blown head gasket.
Is it possible that running bad timing for a long period of time could damage the head gasket? My coolant still looks fine, however there was a bit of gas in my oil when I changed it, I was at the time assuming that was because it had been running rich while the timing was bad, but could there be something else to consider?
I'm starting to think a 1j swap might be less headache than this car has given me so far.
To clarify, this is what I mean by running warm.
It gets to here, and no further.
I thought it may have been the gauges from Tanin were a little off, but I let it idle at that temperature and went for a short drive and when I got back the coolant overflow was spitting out some coolant, so the car appears to actually be running warm, this doesnt seem to be a gauge issue.
So on my next hunch I thought that maybe the engine had a faulty coolant temp sensor, and I decided to replace that to see if it would solve the problem.
While I was in there I drained, flushed, and replaced the radiator, got new radiator hoses, a new engine thermostat, a new power steering pump, new high pressure power steering lines, and a new return power steering line.
While I was bleeding the power steering and coolant the engine was running fine, and then it started to idle rough and was swinging in idle from about 200 rpm to 700 rpm. So naturally I was pretty pissed, but decided to just let it run until it died. There was not any smoke coming out of the exhaust like before though.
I'm absolutely at my wits end, what else could be causing this problem? So far I've replaced...
All thats left that I can vaguely associate with this is fuel pump, or head gasket. I'm ready to torch the car and anyone who's ever had a nice word to say about it. Does anyone have any idea what it could be, or any rabbit trail for me to go down searching for a solution?
Also since these most recent repairs the engine is no longer running slightly warm. #SilverLinings
I'm going on a hunch that the gas from May, might have lost some of it's octane rating and might have gone bad. Going to get some Octane booster to see if my current problems are just coming from the gas, if I can run out the tank I'll get some fresh gas in and a carb cleaner ran through the system. This could be just a really simple problem that exacerbated from the car sitting around.
So I put some octane booster into the gas and the car stays idling now, no smoke, no CEL yet. Haven't driven it around yet since it's still up on jacks, and getting it off jacks is a pain. I'm going to bring it down and drive it around until i use up this tank then I'll run another tank with some carb cleaner in it and I'll keep monitoring it to see what happens.
The gas in the car right now was purchased sometime in early May, or possibly late April, and I've heard that 2 months of sitting around can do that to gas, so I'm hoping thats what the problem is. I'll keep watching the car, and if I never post in this thread again about more problems, you all can assume that no news is good news.
I may end up deciding to have it compression tested in the upcoming future anyways due to the cars age and all of the recent troubles I've been having with it. It's starting to seem more and more like that would be a prudent thing to do so I can better decide what this cars future will be. Now that I'm out of college, the idea of an engine swap is much more plausible than it was when I purchased the car, so that may end up happening in the future if I can't get this one running perfectly.
that sounds like a plan, if you haven't done the fuel filter in a long time one of those wont hurt with gas issues, I am not having any but I plan to do mine here pretty soon as good insurance. if you are swapping maybe don't bother with the compression test, it is a pain on the stock intake to remove the throttle body.
05-25-16, 09:36 AM
