My old highschool car

[awdtsi_90]

Update, decided to wait untill I get the plugs and wires in before Iget a log. Parts are arriving tomorrow and wensday suppose to rain but if I have time I will get them switched out and hopefully no more misfire. I did go ahead and put the original ecu in because the pictures I sent to ecm they Said they see nothing wrong. If it misfire still I will try ecu one more time just to rule it out again with the new wires and plugs & ignition coil pack.

 

[We're on Boost]

Update, decided to wait untill I get the plugs and wires in before Iget a log. Parts are arriving tomorrow and wensday suppose to rain but if I have time I will get them switched out and hopefully no more misfire. I did go ahead and put the original ecu in because the pictures I sent to ecm they Said they see nothing wrong. If it misfire still I will try ecu one more time just to rule it out again with the new wires and plugs & ignition coil pack.

Ok, glad ECM got back to you.
Yeah with the log + video, be sure that there is some clear way to sync up the video seconds with the log seconds. That's so when we hear a misfire in the video, we know exactly what seconds to look at in the log. You know how when shooting movies or TV they always used a clapperboard ? (or they did in film days, don't know if they still do that). The clapperboard, you could see it in the film track and you could hear it in the audio track, so they could sync the film with the audio later. In our case here we don't need a clapperboard - we'd be looking at the numbers we see on the laptop screen in the video, and finding where in the log those exact numbers appear, and then have to remember that when logging the running car, the "now" time is just coming onto the right edge of the screen, it's not in the middle of the screen.
It's not that the log and the video have to be started at the same time. You wouldn't have to do that. We just have to be able to sync the log with the video afterward. Maybe your log will be ~4 minutes long and your video might only be ~3 minutes long, it's ok, as long as you are shooting video when there is misfire that we can hear, and can figure out how to sync the video with the log afterward.
If the "secs" number is readable on the laptop screen in the video, that is the main thing, but let's see the whole laptop screen.

 

[awdtsi_90]

I am so irritated and starting to hate these cars..

New plugs & wires and still misfire on cylinder 2 and maybe 1.

passenger side cylinder is 4321 with 1 being on driver side.

Firing order is 4123 on coil pack

If I unplug cylinder 2 there is no difference with little to none on cylinder 1 either

Unplugging cylinder 4 or 3 will almost kill the car.

I will make a log and video tomorrow. Just cold and irritated with car at the moment.

Also tried both ecu again and it dose not matter

 

[pauleyman]

I am so irritated and starting to hate these cars..

New plugs & wires and still misfire on cylinder 2 and maybe 1.

passenger side cylinder is 4321 with 1 being on driver side.

Firing order is 4123 on coil pack

If I unplug cylinder 2 there is no difference with little to none on cylinder 1 either

Unplugging cylinder 4 or 3 will almost kill the car.

I will make a log and video tomorrow. Just cold and irritated with car at the moment.

Also tried both ecu again and it dose not matter

Watch it in the dark, see if you can spot an obvious jump. Coil pack could have a hairline crack. New wires could still fail (unlikely). Check coils physically and electrically. Test them hot. Same for ignition power transistor. I would recommend taking both components off the car and if they're not clean then clean them and give them a hard inspection. Look close.
I would also listen to injectors one by one with a stethoscope or at least the screwdriver method if that's all you have.

 

[AlaskanDsm]

May not be useful information, especially with a CEL indicating on 44, but tailing on Pauleyman's comment.

I had a funky injector at one point that would randomly stop working and start working again once the engine warmed up. Eventually figured it out with the old screwdriver to the injector trick to compare a working injector vs the bad injector when it misfired. Replaced the injector and misfire went away.

 

[We're on Boost]

passenger side cylinder is 4321 with 1 being on driver side.

Firing order is 4123 on coil pack

The actual firing order is 1-3-4-2 but you don't even need to know that to get the wires hooked up right.
You have a 1990 coil pack and a 1990 power transistor, so all you need to do is make sure the spark plug wires are routed correctly. The best diagram I can find for that is this one.
Then below that is my photo of a nice clean 1990 coil pack showing how the locations are numbered.

 

[We're on Boost]

Eventually figured it out with the old screwdriver to the injector trick to compare a working injector vs the bad injector when it misfired. Replaced the injector and misfire went away.

What is the old screwdriver trick?

 

[AlaskanDsm]

Just using a decent sized screwdriver as a poor man's stethoscope, haha.

 

[We're on Boost]

Just using a decent sized screwdriver as a poor man's stethoscope, haha.

Oh OK.

 

[pauleyman]

What is the old screwdriver trick?

Get the longest screwdriver you have and hold the handle to your ear. Place the top on whatever you're listening to. Injectors make a distinctive rhythmic tic tic tic. If one sounds funky there is a problem with the injector, harness or ecu.

 

[awdtsi_90]

The actual firing order is 1-3-4-2 but you don't even need to know that to get the wires hooked up right.
You have a 1990 coil pack and a 1990 power transistor, so all you need to do is make sure the spark plug wires are routed correctly. The best diagram I can find for that is this one.
Then below that is my photo of a nice clean 1990 coil pack showing how the locations are numbered.


View attachment 755764







View attachment 755766

This is what I was meaning when I said firing order. sorry . I was referring to the same Pic and thought it just ment firing order on the ignition coil pack .

Get the longest screwdriver you have and hold the handle to your ear. Place the top on whatever you're listening to. I vectors make a distinctive rhythmic tic tic tic. If one sounds funky there is a problem with the injector, harness or ecu.

I will do that tomorow.

I also have 1000 cc injectors with a wlabrol 255 fuel pump in the garage. just don't have a fuel pressure regulator or money for one either unfortunately.

Watch it in the dark, see if you can spot an obvious jump. Coil pack could have a hairline crack. New wires could still fail (unlikely). Check coils physically and electrically. Test them hot. Same for ignition power transistor. I would recommend taking both components off the car and if they're not clean then clean them and give them a hard inspection. Look close.
I would also listen to injectors one by one with a stethoscope or at least the screwdriver method if that's all you have.

Thank you. I have injectors and CAS are the only things I havnt replaced.

Also Gary I forgot to mention with the car running I did move the wires going into the ptu like you suggested and to no avail unfortunately.

I have been reading up on this problem and most of these discussion on code 0044 with misfire seems to have alot of threads not resolved.

 

[pauleyman]

I missed that 044. Aside from the actual code, o we noticed years ago ecus would flag 044 codes when there was board damage. I'm not familiar with component location but I remember many discussions long ago. Did you check the ecu?

 

[miliman13]

Ok, glad ECM got back to you.

That is great news, not a very common occurrence based on many threads here within the last year or so.

 

[awdtsi_90]

I missed that 044. Aside from the actual code, o we noticed years ago ecus would flag 044 codes when there was board damage. I'm not familiar with component location but I remember many discussions long ago. Did you check the ecu?

Yes. I have sent pics of the ecu to ecm and they said they see no issue.

I also have put the ecu from the 1990 eclipse gsx to see if that fixed it and no it didn't matter. It dose the same thing regardless on the ecu or ptu being swapped with working one's.

Here is the pics of my ecu in talon and ecu of eclipse I swapped out to try.

 

[awdtsi_90]

We had 5 messages in between me & ecm. here is the last one they sent after they saw my pics

 

[We're on Boost]

I just looked again at your 12.30 and 12.26 logs to see if the 044 code was there too, and it's not there. Those were both actual driving logs and the car seemed to drive more or less ok.
Now all of a sudden in the 1.24 log there is audible misfire and there is an 044 code.
So it sure seems like the 044 code is a key to the whole problem.

I don't think that fouled spark plugs or bad spark plug wires would throw an 044 code.
And clogged injectors or clogged fuel filter wouldn't throw an 044 code.
It seems that it's not the ecu, since it also misfired with the ecu from the other car.

So it seems like it must be one of the ignition system components that we've been talking about, or the electrical connectors on them.
And like you say, the CAS is the only ignition related component you haven't swapped yet. So maybe the CAS is it, but if it's a bad CAS why doesn't it throw a code 22 or 23? Arrg.

Or it still could be one of the electrical connectors.

I don't know if we would be able to tell anything about those items from a log, but I'd sure still like to see a log that we can sync with the sound from a video, so we can tell by the sound where to look in the log to see anything that sticks out about the misfire in the log.
The other thing I wonder is, have you tried actually driving the car since it started doing this misfire? If so, how does it act when you are driving? In your last video which was just sitting there in neutral, it wasn't misfiring all the time, it was only misfiring when you would poke the gas pedal. It seemed to be idling and running pretty good except for the misfire, but not like it was going to quit running at any moment. So you could drive it a little bit that way just for diagnosis.

 

[awdtsi_90]

Here is the log & video of the car. I will show a screenshot of when the video and start on log is synced up.

The car has rattles from the dash & hood. So I took one of it idle qnd a little rev outside.



Here is the log of a short drive.

I also disconnected the CAS & the o2 sensor and replugged everything back in also before the log.

Log didn't save for the original log today so i went and made another one at night.

Idk if the video deleted or stayed on youtube but the correct video for this log is the one at night and on the video it is 1 second behind.
The log is at 6.9 seconds while the video is at 6 seconds i started the log and video at same time to make it easier to link up the log to video so log is roughly 1 second behind the log which i also say and show the time of log on video also.

There is no more dtc code 0044 for circuit malfunction so idk because it definitely is still misfiring or sputtering.

Maybe from switching out ecu, disconnect battery and unplugging everything reset the code?

 

[awdtsi_90]

 

[awdtsi_90]

Fuel issue maybe now? At 129.272 on the log I am at 64% throttle with -7.8 in vacume and getting 13% of injector duty with 188.51cc/min. which seems pretty low compared to another log where i was at.

31% throttle at -8.3 vacuum at 18.3 injector duty. here are pics of them

Still wouldnt make sense or explain why unplugging cylinder 4 &3 makes such a huge difference where 2 & 1 really dont.

I did put a screwdriver to all the injectors running and heard a tic in all but cylinder 1 had almost no tic which would explain this. Could of really also been the ignition coil pack to maybe?

 

[pauleyman]

If one cylinder isn't ticking you can check if it's getting a signal to see if it's injector or signal/wire. You could also swap 2 injectors and see if problems follow. Quick and easy to do.

 

[We're on Boost]

Well, thinking about the CAS, I don't see any rpm dropouts in the log. The rpm numbers look right. They are all continuous and sensible. But there are 2 sensors in the CAS - Crank Angle and TDC. Both of them have to be working right to give you proper ignition operation. But I don't think you need both to get a correct rpm signal. If the Crank Angle sensor is good and the TDC sensor is intermittent, I think you'd get a good rpm signal but bad ignition. Anybody know this for sure? If so then the raggy running could still be due to a raggy CAS. As for it not throwing either of the CAS DTC's, it wouldn't be the first time the DTC's have let us down.

I don't know how long it takes for a DTC to come back after the ecu has been reset by disconnecting the battery.

It still could be an intermittent electrical connector somewhere.
It still might be some fuel thing.

The 2 things I see wrong for sure in the log are:
1.) When I look at the log on my computer, I don't see the same Airflow numbers that we see in the video. The Airflow numbers in the video are about 6 or 7 times higher than what I see in the log on my computer. The Airflow in the video is wrong. But the MAF Hz looks correct. This is weird. All I can think of is it may be a mismatch between the ECM V3 Lite firmware in the ecu and the ECM software on the laptop. I don't know if this would even affect the way the engine runs, because the ecu is probably only using the Hz, and the Airflow lb/min we see in the log is just a number that ECM calculates for us. But I wouldn't want to live with it.
2.) It's still running way too lean. It needs at least to have the MAF Comp done like shown in post #209 and that might be only a start.

 

[We're on Boost]

Here's a shot of the log in the video and the log on my computer at the same seconds so you can see how the numbers are the same, all except for the Airflow lbs/min.

It might also look weird that MAFRaw and MAF are so different. But I think that's normal when you are looking at it right after a throttle transient which is where this is. MAFRaw is very fast, immediate basically. MAF lags behind by quite a bit. It's Airflow smoothing I guess. They are usually almost identical when the throttle is steady.


Here's another comparison shot from near the end of the video where the car is idling pretty steady, it's not right after a transient. The MAFRaw and MAF are about the same here. Airflow number in the video is still way off, way higher than it should be. All the other numbers are the same on both screens.

 

[awdtsi_90]

I will get those switched over today. Thank you for taking time and helping with this.

It's weird that the airflow is different.

With ks crazy temp change it went from 71 on the 2nd to a high of 40 today and snow next week with 30 then a high of 18 on one day. Kansas weather

With this cold I may not be able to switch out injectors untill it warms up a little bit.

Injectors removal is unplug the pig tail then take the 3 bolts out that hold the rail in then pull the rail off with the injectors. That easy right?

 

[We're on Boost]

Injectors removal is unplug the pig tail then take the 3 bolts out that hold the rail in then pull the rail off with the injectors. That easy right?

The removal is pretty easy, but when you put the new injectors back in it's not real easy to get everything lined up - all the injectors going straight into all 4 holes nicely so that the seals don't get banged up. You have to be careful with that and it's hard to even see it all at once. And you have to have the correct seals for the injectors.

Your bigger injectors that you have, I don't know if they take the same type of electrical plug. Sometimes they don't. That is something you should get all figured out before you even start to take anything apart. On my car, when I put in 850cc FIC injectors, they used the stock connectors so I didn't have to change that. And I ordered them with seals so I had them. And I smeared the rubber seals with Molykote 111 Compound which is that silicone compound (kind of like a grease) that I use on just about any rubber thing that I put together, and on my thermostat housing gasket and bolts, and in a few other places. I think most people just smear the rubber seals with motor oil.

If it turns out that the injectors need a different type of electrical plug, I'm pretty sure you will be able to buy the right plugs that are already made up with pigtails (wires several inches long) which makes it easier. That's what they did on my car at ER when they put in 1650cc FIC injectors, they cut the old connectors off the harness and crimped on new connectors that had pigtails.

With ks crazy temp change it went from 71 on the 2nd to a high of 40 today and snow next week with 30 then a high of 18 on one day. Kansas weather

Wow.
I was in OKC for a week in late October last year and we did some tornado dodging. Spent a few minutes in the tornado shelter watching weather updates.

 

[We're on Boost]

There could be one more thing with putting different injectors in. If they are High-Z (high impedance) you would need to bypass the stock resistor pack that is on the firewall.
Bypassing it is really easy if you have the connector thingie that is made for that. I have one I could give you, one that was on my car for a couple of years.
But if the injectors are Low-Z you would keep using the stock resistor pack. The stock injectors are Low-Z.