Welcome to the SR20 Community Forum - The Dash.
Register
SR20 forum logo

Thread: Another car and what a mess

+ Reply To Thread
Posts: 11-16 of 16
2019-09-28 20:01:42
#11
I've tested like you have explained to me but I was off halfway since the misfire seemed to be all over the board. By testing in the way you told me, cylinder 1 behaved bad but the engine didn't complain very much on all cylinders.

This may be a real life bad to worse scenario by water. At first I bought myself a scrap car which notably was maintained to the end of times by the usual scheme. It became obvious the distributor and cap wheren't on the list last time and I never saw such a clean paper air filter and good looking spark plugs on a well rusted car with all the interrior lights gone bad. Also the motor oil is good and besides a heavy clutch and slower then slow Sr20 performance, besides a 45 ampere battery installed that I will use for my Micra March from now on because it is the correct one, this car must be well maintained since the former owner left a lot of signs, like the presence of safety wear, safety hammer and a steering wheel cover a mildly abused leather steering wheel and a beyond recognition worn out gear lever with bad taste seat covers.

So, I bought a $200 car which is a $150 bonus to the owner since he wanted to ditch it but he was smart on current market price so I may break even but profit, I rather give it to my friend with a barn and allow him to pick it for good shaped parts for free, if and only if, I get my money back. But that is not the topic. I just write this here may this scrap car become an ongoing theme.

This Sr20 has no o2 sensor since it was destined to Belgium and I drove it a full tank and a half, it gave me 34.3 miles per gallon. This is with moderate acceleration and cruise speed 3000 rpm'ish since wrong tyre size installed. My main egg with a view to fuel efficiency gave me 35.3 miles per gallon and I noticed a working tps and a original Nx2000 rim and some decorative frames so my investment isn't going to be bad.

Eager to learn why this 'well maintained rust bucket' gave me good fuel efficiency, weather went bad and I was able to limp back home. The weather was that bad, where the speedlimit was 80 mph, a safe speed was 40 mph and I only could tell where I was going by the first dashed line. So it is obvious to me a lot of water or moisture is what made my rusty-egg die consistently the next day because it even refused to show me a working eccs.

After sanding grounds the eccs system came back and it refused to start. Because giving throttle helped starting and from there it ran but misfired, I was confused what would be the cause but in the end it was simple. While the misfiring sounded to me one cylinder gone bad, it might have been that distributor cap (original part), made two cylinders fire somewhat proper and the other two just bad, where I believe that is a result by design.

From there I just assume the dizzy is just as old and yes it is worn until the end of times.


From here I could drive my car from the parking lot to my front door so that was a plus already but it refused to give power or idle. Searching for clues, the dashboard fuses, left bar third from top (fuel pump choke) being removed made it idle. Installing this 15 ampere fuse made it die instant.

At this point it became obvious to me, swapping out parts should help. It also became aware to me that it is easy to tell what parts can be swapped without relying on double checking. Spark plug wires, cap and dizzy are easy to interchange and no harm done.

I added a coil and from this point I told myself to stop swap parts where I would need to learn by fsm how a power transistor can be swapped but also the scrap car started, idled and responded on the throttle audible like my main egg, where my main egg has a original dizzy 15k and a oem cap with added to this a 15k el cheapo Nx1600 wiring which fits but it won't be watertite and a rockauto like what brand coil wire.

Test driving, this rustbucket still refuses to give power in the 2500 - 3000 range where I wonder if a worn (can they?) power transistor could be responsible or if I still missed an engine mass. Not really for the eccs system but for engine mass. I understand engine mass for the spark is the engine but where does the engine mass finds it way back to the coil?

For the rest, daily driving, it sounded, responded and idled like my main egg. Interesting. Especially the engine sound. I would like to swap this Sr20 since I can tell it is in better shape, especially for the timing but overall, while I guestimate there will be a difference, I have no means to test compression and if I was able to do so, swapping an engine single handed on the street won't be on my agenda so I will sell it soon.

But from here some nice movies and pics. If someone could elaborate me on 150k plus miles power transistors or engine mass and other things to look at, I still have no proper spark but it seems to me the sound is more important then the colour. I've took my time to write this message since I believe it is a textbook example of bad mass, bad ignition, especially the rotor and bad weather made the eccs and the iginition refuse a hundred percent.

The bad performing ignition
Nissan Nx2000 bad spark from iginition

The better perfoming iginition but the misfiring still audible and other Nx2000 not complaining
Nissan Nx2000 audible ignition but no white or blue spark yet
2019-09-30 17:00:52
#12
I've have two running eggs now. Not in the way I would liked but I can choose which one to take to work. The last rain was that fiercly rust-egg refused to start properly and even the tccm wasn't online any longer.

By swapping ignition parts I found out that by swapping cables, rotor, cap and coil, rust-egg still misses here and there. It isn't noticable besides a minor gap in the 2500 - 3000 rpm range.

Giving my proper original rotor to rust-egg I have two cars that respond well on full throttle.

I would like to learn, because I excluded parts from the ignition system, can a power transistor really be at fault for dipping a bit? It is just a transistor I believe. What other parts besides the distributor itself can be swapped out to learn what part misses minorly and dips a bit? This is not a main objective for me but I try to learn where my ignition system could be helped to give even better spark in the blue and audible range to the also blue and audible range because I noticed how big the powerloss can be. Hoping to gain something there.

I have another question posted because now I can start thinking how to get the good results for driveabillity from rust-egg to my Nx2000, which is being nervous for nine years now.
2019-09-30 22:25:43
#13
The ignition coil might be suspect. The power transistor could be too, but is is a simple device as you've suspected. But neither of those would favor two plugs over the other two. That's a distributor/plug-wire/plug problem... Or maybe an injector problem...
2019-10-01 10:10:03
#14
On that cap, the two posts are gone. Cap needs replaced.
2019-10-01 23:34:37
#15
Glad to see you guys responding!
I am working on a basket case and can’t get it to fire.
I will make a post about it tomorrow!
2019-10-02 15:27:30
#16
I've swapped the spark plug cables, cap, rotor and coil cable and also the coil. But not the transistor. So I reckon it is either that (but something tells me a transistor would work, work bad on all rpms or not at all), so maybe it might be the injectors. Those didn't have a cleaner recently I'm sure. Now rust-egg is properly firing with normal driving I'll attempt to drive for a while and recheck spark plug colours. The spark plugs on rust-egg are new visible by the eye. Even installed by someone that used 30 newton meters of torque on all four of them
Last edited by richardwbb on 2019-10-02 at 15-40-06.
+ Reply To Thread
  • [Type to search users.]
  • Quick Reply
    Thread Information
    There are currently ? users browsing this thread. (? members & ? guests)
    StubUserName

    Back to top