Missing/Stumble At Idle, Not a Surge...Whats a PIP?

brentwoodboy said:

After Manifold reinstallation (had a leak), my idle misses. Car runs great through 1000 rpm and up. I have new plugs, wires, cap, cleaned my MAF, new IAC...

What could it be? Also, what is a PIP sensor and what are the symptoms of a bad one?

ALso, it idles better with the spout out.

Click to expand...

You must be kinda young

Whats a PIP?......Ever heard of Gladys Knight?......Mo-Town?

Sorry I just couldn't resist, it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw your Q

PIP = Profile Ignition Pickup

I didn't know that till you asked but ...... I Googled it

I didn't know we had a PIP on our cars

Might be the same thing as the Hall Effect thingy

By now, hope you can tell......I don't have a clue

Later
Grady

You get something like "intermittant signal loss" on the PIP code to...Sounds like time to replace the dizzy...

When my hall effect sensor went bad I had a whole month of hard starts, it would take several cranks to get the car started up. Then one day it quit while I was driving and I replaced it, problem solved.

PIP is the stator in the dizzy. it is responsible for base injector and spark timing. They generally (note I said generally because you guys seem to have some dizzy issues that foxes dont have) tend to work or not work.

Since you are having a low speed miss (Grady, showing our age, in the old days, i would have said, 'it sounds like a jetting issue to me' ). But the extra timing advance might be exacerbating the issue, which is why it idles better with the SPOUT out.

First thing to do is yank codes. Go from there.

Good luck.

Best bet is to buy a new distributor if you're in need of a profile ignition pickup. As cheap as the new sensor is (and it is cheap), the rebuild of the dizzy isn't worth the fact that you're probably going to want to upgrade anyway, grab an MSD and you'll be good to go. If you DO decide to rebuild the stock unit, just remember to mark where your timing was originally set, it will be a lot more time consuming if you don't. Once you pull the top of the dizzy, then take out the retaining pins, bottom gear, and finally the whole shaft from the top part, you'll find the sensor sitting in there, less than 40 bucks and you'll have it back together and running fine.