Strange problem

[saintsairforce]

Last night and today I have had this recuring strange problem. When driving at around 80km/h the car will kind of miss a step and the check engine light will come on then go out. It happened about a total of 3 times so far and just seems to come out of no where. When it happened at night I saw a blue spark fly out from the drives side hood. The car runs fine otherwise. I'm thinking it might have something to do with the spark plug wires. It's a 93 laser non turbo. Just bought it last week and have done a lot of repairs to it so it would pass the safety and emissions test. The previous owner said the spark plugs and wires were new however the car had been sitting for a while. I had swaped out the altenator with one from my 91 laser NT. It old altenator wasn't working. Any ideas what could be causing this strange behavour. I'm off to work now but plan on working on it tomarrow.

Ricky

 

[Spooling99]

The first part sounds like the symptoms of a failing ECU. My car did the same thing until I got a new one. The blue sparks I'm not to sure about that.

 

[saintsairforce]

I was thinking about that on my way to work today. My last car, 91 laser. Had a simular problem with the cutting out and error message that disapeared. It ended up being the capacitors and I just ended up fixing that myself. Perhaps that might be the same thing here. I'll check it out tomarrow. As for the blue spark I'm guessing it has something to do with the spark plug wires. Before this problem I had noticed one of the spark plug wires was not even connected when I bought it. In anycase, I have a set of good wires and good quality spark plugs so I'm just going to change those on spec.

Thanks for your help. Hope that is the problem.

Ricky

 

[saintsairforce]

Well, I sqapped out the ECU with one I knew worked well, and I changed the park plug wires with some good ones. Hopefully that will solve my problem. I'll find out after the next few days of driving around.

 

[Spooling99]

Let us know what happens.

 

[kene04]

ECU sounds right, happened on my car too. After a while it gets worse, it'll die and then won't start up right away. It is a pretty common problem with DSM's. I've also noticed that they tend to go out pretty quickly after you put a new one in. Best bet, is new aftermarket ecu when you can afford it.

 

[Defiant]

Bolt down your battery.

 

[saintsairforce]

It ended up being a short in a wire that was causing the problem. Every now and then the wire would short out and thus the reason for the check engine light coming on then off and the blue spark. All fixed now.