93VertBT
Member
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for the "Surging Idle Checklist". I purchased the car Oct. 2015 with a hesitation and stalling. It had been sitting a while 6 or 7 yrs as the story goes. I went on the assumption bad gas. Pumped old gas out changed the fuel filter and no change to the hesitation or stalling problems. Did not have much time with the car before it went to a friends garage for the winter.
Pulled car out in the spring and started the troubleshooting process. With the help of several sites especially Stangnet and in particular jrichker I was able to on my own bring the motor back to 100%. It sure is nice to have all eight cylinders firing and running properly.
I upgraded the alternator to 130 amp because I thought the factory one was just barely enough to keep the car going. I also thought it might have been part of my problem.
Here is what I found. A bad O2 sensor on the passenger side. Changed both of them. After the first balance test found out #4 and #2 cylinders had a problem. Started with the #2 plug, pulled it and found the gap was close to .020. Reset the gap and # 2 was cleared. Pulled the plug on #4 the gap was much better than #2 but still not correct close to .038. At that point pulled on the plugs and reset them all to .054 and they all needed adjusting.
Ran the balance test again and #4 still showed up. Swapped spark plug wires and #4 was still there. Moved on to the injectors. Found out #4 injector was not firing (listening with a piece of hose). Checked for 12v power it was there. Tried to ohm it to ground and got a bad reading (bad like I did the procedure incorrectly). I gave a little tug on the wiring to the injector and the plug popped off. So I plugged it back on (after removing the upper intake) started it back up and knew right away that it was back whole again.
So once again thank you to everyone especially jrichker for putting this list together and sharing your vast wealth of knowledge. Your step by step approach was very easy to understand. If a novice like myself can attack and SOLVE a problem like surging or stalling who knows what could happen next.
Pulled car out in the spring and started the troubleshooting process. With the help of several sites especially Stangnet and in particular jrichker I was able to on my own bring the motor back to 100%. It sure is nice to have all eight cylinders firing and running properly.
I upgraded the alternator to 130 amp because I thought the factory one was just barely enough to keep the car going. I also thought it might have been part of my problem.
Here is what I found. A bad O2 sensor on the passenger side. Changed both of them. After the first balance test found out #4 and #2 cylinders had a problem. Started with the #2 plug, pulled it and found the gap was close to .020. Reset the gap and # 2 was cleared. Pulled the plug on #4 the gap was much better than #2 but still not correct close to .038. At that point pulled on the plugs and reset them all to .054 and they all needed adjusting.
Ran the balance test again and #4 still showed up. Swapped spark plug wires and #4 was still there. Moved on to the injectors. Found out #4 injector was not firing (listening with a piece of hose). Checked for 12v power it was there. Tried to ohm it to ground and got a bad reading (bad like I did the procedure incorrectly). I gave a little tug on the wiring to the injector and the plug popped off. So I plugged it back on (after removing the upper intake) started it back up and knew right away that it was back whole again.
So once again thank you to everyone especially jrichker for putting this list together and sharing your vast wealth of knowledge. Your step by step approach was very easy to understand. If a novice like myself can attack and SOLVE a problem like surging or stalling who knows what could happen next.