Fighting the urge to dropkick my car (long)

[GForce]

I bought a 1990 Eagle Talon TSi AWD back at the beginning of December. The turbo was bad on it, and the radiator fans didn't work, but it had a freshly rebuilt head and new timing belt.

Through months of piecing together parts from my wrecked Eclipse I finally got to take the Talon out for a drive last week. It ran beautifully except a faint clicking noise at full boost.

The next day on my way to my dad's house, the dipstick popped out about a mile from his house, shot oil on the driver's side of the engine. At his house I wiped some of the oil off, refilled the oil, and drove home (about 5-6 miles to my house). The car purred like a kitten, temp and oil pressure were good and constant, and I parked it on my basketball court. I put a new dipstick in and crimped the top so it wouldn't come out again.

Two days later I came out to move it into the garage to install some new foglights on it, and the thing would barely start, kept stalling. I checked the oil and coolant, they were fine, so I tried again and the car started up, and I pulled it into the garage. I gave it a small amount of gas after letting it idle for a while and the engine sounded like a person trying to talk underwater, then went back to idling fine, but I could hear a metal-on-metal noise in about 5-second intervals.

Chalking it up to Friday the 13th I just stopped there and went inside. I came out today to see if I could figure out what was wrong, when I tried to start the car it took a few tries, then it started up and idled to 2500, then died. Plus my headlights don't work anymore, and only one of the parking lights work, with a battery that is only maybe a week and a half old.

If you've suffered through all of this, if anybody has any ideas please suggest anything, this car is driving me nuts. I had my Eclipse GSX for a while before it got t-boned and it never gave me any troubles at all.

Thanks,
Gunnar

 

[thejeebus]

When your dipstick popped out did you soak your alternator with oil?

if so, it's probably not charging properly which will cause a slew of problems with our cars.

 

[GForce]

Yeah I'm pretty sure oil got all over the alternator. Could that really be causing all of these problems? I've got another DSM alternator handy, how hard of a swap is it?

Thanks for the help so far.

 

[schwag9AWD]

It's most likely the alternator, I had a small P/S leak near the alternator that caused some weird electrical problems, and eventually took out the regulator which was only putting out 11 volts.
Are your batt. or coolant lights on, or dim at idle? If you have a multi-tester you can test the alternator if you can get the car started again to make sure that's the problem.
It's not that hard of a job, for more room you might want to remove the rad. fans first to pull it out through the top.
http://www.myzero.com/electrical/alt.html
I used this VFAQ, but I didn't remove the water pump pulleys which made it easier.

 

[fasteclipse1992]

fight the urge man. i know how u feel..... fight the urge

 

[GForce]

Originally posted by fasteclipse1992
fight the urge man. i know how u feel..... fight the urge

It's frustrating isn't it?

No lights are on at idle. I understand about how changing the alternator will help with all the lights, but is there any way that it's to blame for the car not really running all of a sudden? If so that'd be a huge weight off my mind.

 

[fasteclipse1992]

if it was a carurated chevy v8 id say check the ignition moduel. my camaro did the same thing ur car did bad ignition moduel. the power tr moduel is like an ignition moduel as to a carburated v8. far as ur lights not working may be a bad connection somwhere either at the battery or the wiring to the lights or a relay or fuse check all that. or ur ecu is goin out on u.

 

[GForce]

Up until this all happened the driver's side headlight and both parking lights worked (I had no passenger headlight assembly). I put the passenger headlight back in recently but didn't test it before everything went to shit.

When I try to start it up, when it first catches and starts to rev up it sorta sounds like it's not running on all cylinders (until it gets up higher, like I said it revs to like 2500 RPM's and dies), but I have fairly new plugs and the wires are from my GSX which always ran like a beaut.

 

[fasteclipse1992]

my car isnt gettin any spark from any cylynder im hoping its cus of the ecu it had. hopefully the 1 i bought of a trader on this forum will come in this week and will start my car. otherwisew ill be drop kicking it to the curb.

 

[schwag9AWD]

When you say it starts up and goes to 2500 rpm, are you giving it gas or is it idling up on its own? If the idle is going up slowly by itself and then dying you may want to check your ISC motor. One time I tested mine and forgot to plug it back in and it did the same thing your talking about the next time I started it. That wouldn't really explain the rest of you problems though, but good luck.

 

[fasteclipse1992]

would the isc cause acar not to get a spark if its not hooked up? i noticed my wire was broke on mine today so i hooked it up

 

[GForce]

It pretty much does it on it's own. I tap the gas a little when it's trying to start so it'll catch and when it catches it goes up to 2500 and then dies. If I do give it some gas it'll go up as high as I make it go then when I let off the gas it'll die.

I've got a turbo Laser parts car and my wrecked Eclipse that I sometimes bum parts off of (because I know they worked before the wreck), how tough is it to swap the ISC?

By the time this car can go every day it'll have pretty much everything from the Eclipse in it, if I continue at this rate.

 

[mitsutuner]

If you drop-kick the car, you will only hurt your foot. If you drive the car into the ocean it will only sink intermittently. I usually just curse a lot & throw wrenches, but not at the car.
It sounds like your prob has to do with oil & alt. a bad combo. You might get lucky & get away with just cleaning the alt connecters & take a close look at the B+ wire from the alt & make sure it's not arcing to the oil filter--if not lucky then swap out the alt. Your problem w/repeat later if oil vapor is spewing out the top of your dipstick, even if it doesn't pop out, so go ahead & replace the PCV valve.
There's also a remote chance that oil got into your headlight wiring connecter & also if your alt malfunctioned in such a manner as to generate voltage spikes large enough, then you might have injured your ECU.

 

[GForce]

So if I swap alternators and put in the ECU out of my 90 turbo Laser maybe the car will come back to life?

This car makes me wish I had a little brother to beat up in times like this.

 

[mitsutuner]

Just do the alt & the PCV at first & see what happens--be sure to clean up & carefully inspect all the wiring & connecters to the alt.

 

[GForce]

Will do, and I'll report back tomorrow. I love DSMTuners, for the record. Most everybody's so helpful around here.

 

[BOBS90TURBO]

I also bought a 90 tsi awd in december and i had to take the alternater out of my blown engine 90 gst, before I swapped units my tsi was acting crazy, reving up to 2500rpm,light not working and the wierd thing is my idiot lights was fine, they were not even coming on, good luck man at least you got a lot of advise thats more than I can say.

 

[jrivard00]

Your car should be able to run with out an alternator for a little while atleast until battery dies. You can disconnect the wires at the alt and see if your problems go away after you start it up. If so, then it's your alt.

 

[thejeebus]

Caps in your ECU replaced? I'd check that if you haven't replaced them already. 1st gens are notorious for the caps leaking and will cause all kinds of funny running problems.

scott

 

[dsmturboawd]

the dipstick thing might be cause of a failed pcv valve.

as far as your other problem goes, i cannot help you with that.

 

[98RedGs]

Originally posted by jrivard00
Your car should be able to run with out an alternator for a little while atleast until battery dies. You can disconnect the wires at the alt and see if your problems go away after you start it up. If so, then it's your alt.

True.
I would try this before taking the time to swap alternators.

 

[GSXanimal]

All I have to say is welcome to the world of dsms, soon enough you will be an expert auto technician if you own it long enough, and you might also be living out of it.

 

[GForce]

Originally posted by GSXanimal
All I have to say is welcome to the world of dsms, soon enough you will be an expert auto technician if you own it long enough, and you might also be living out of it.

Yeah, I knew this when I got my '93 GSX last year, I think it lulled me into a false sense of security because the car never gave me a single problem (until a guy in a Ford Ranger decided he "never saw me" and hit me in the side going about 45).

The Talon's showing me what DSM life is really like.

 

[awdEAGLEtsi]

ya i think you need to figure out why the dipstick came out in the first place. was it just old and really just needed to be replaced/crimped or did it blow out for a reason. and since you crimpedt he new one so hard, it can't release the pressure? i don't know, it just seems like you should figure out why the dipstick blew out in the first place.