Faulty Distributor / crankshaft sensor ??

[mathewh]

1993 imported Eunos Presso 1.8 V6.

The owner before me had replaced the disty with a cheap recon'd one a month before I bought the car and all was well for a few months. I then broke down, the engine just suddenly cut out whilst driving, and the garage told me it was the disty, so I sent it back to the suppliers/manufacturers and they fixed it under warrenty, it worked fine. The supplier however said at the time that there may be another problem on the car which caused the disty to break.

So, it has been fine for a while, but after about 2 mths being off the road recently for unrelated repairs, I finally got it back on the road again last week, and low and behold it seems to have gone again! Stranded at the traffic lights! There is no spark at the plugs. My friend, a mechanic, will look at it soon but asked me to get some info on the wiring, he mentioned it may be a prob with the crankshaft sensor ?? What is that and where is that?

Incidently, there was a lot of squeeling from a rubber belt when I turned the aircon on, just 5 mins before it broke down, could that be an issue?

Any help/wiring diagrams/pointers is much appreciated.

Thanks
Mat

[Gro Harlem]

Sounds like a disty issue to me.

I'm on my 5th distributor in about a years time of using my car. The ignitor module likes to burn out due to high under-hood temperatures.

There is a way to bypass the POS stock ignitor by using an external GM HEI module. Some how-to's are written up on probetalk.

[IanL]

I'll email you the wiring diagrams.

My 97 model has no disty problems and it doesn't have any extra under-hood cooling

I think earlier distys used poor igniter transistors, and later ones have an improved component. However, it may be that the remanufacturers persist in using the duff one.

The camshaft sensor is built into the distributor, which is driven by the camshaft. It is only a crankshaft sensor in that the crankshaft is connected to the camshafts by the timing belt. This is why it is suggested that a broken or misaligned belt can look like ignition failure. A broken belt will result in no timing pulses from the sensor, so no trigger from the ECU to the igniter, so no spark. A misaligned belt will give a spark at the wrong time, but you can still see it when you check. A defective sensor will also result in no spark.

If the supplier says there's something on the car that is overtaxing the igniter, ask him what the voltage rating of the collector/emitter interface is, and where he thinks your car is getting the extra from. Because that story is brown and comes steaming out of Cowes, and it isn't the Isle of Wight ferry

<small>[ August 12, 2004, 01:28 AM: Message edited by: IanL ]</small>