Hey guys so I'm getting sick of my car. I was on the way to a very important dinner the other night and I was cruising at a steady 100km/h. The car kind of bobbled and then cruised for a few more seconds then it completely died. I still had power steering, brakes, all electronics, lights and everything but the engine lost power. As I pulled over and came to a stop it let out a HUGE backfire. I tried to start it and it cranked just fine, (very strong as I had just replaced the starter a few weeks ago). It didn't start, didn't even really sound like it was trying to start. About 3 seconds after I stopped cranking it backfired again. So I left it, got it towed home. Then yesterday I went to go work on it and I wanted to show my dad what it does trying to start, but this times is started up just perfectly, no hesitation at all. I let it run for about 30 seconds, went up and down the driveway once and then turned it off.
So, it seems fine, but it will leave me stranded somewhere else now. Could this be an overheating issue? Cruising on the highway at steady speed it should not have overheated, rad overflow level is right where it should be, temperature gauge was just fine when I came to a stop.
Could it be a sensor failing when it gets warm? The coil is only 3 years old, it's an msd blaster 2. Plug wires have been replaced in the last few years, same with cap/rotor. The big backfires make me think it could be timing related? But it should have easily started if that was the case.
No check engine light came on at all.
If anyone could shed some light on this it would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Car died, wouldnt start. Now it's fine
August 11, 2015 - 9:24am
#1
Car died, wouldnt start. Now it's fine
check all your boost hoses are tight
i've blown off the bov hose and its done something similar.
Backfires mean you are running really rich or timing is off.
Check every vacuum lines around the intake for cracks and leaks.
It's your ignitor. Replace it and put a heatsink on the replacement.
How do you attach the heat sink to it? Just one from a computer or something?
by heatsink I think he meant some aluminum sheet like the exhaust heat shield.
by the way I never had any problem with the ignitor, still in stock position without any heatsink.
I used an aluminum computer heatsink with some paste. fixed the problem for me.
http://www.canadagtir.com/comment/12864#comment-12864 like so
i just screwed the power transistor into it
i did that ages ago, forgot about that
but i didnt have so much backfiring and engine dying, i did have a wierd no boost, stutter situation.
What is the power transistor? I have an msd blaster coil. Is it another ame for a coil?
it looks like that : http://thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mX_tHvGpUmSzW9AwxOWPoag.jpg
on a fully stock engine it's bolted on the block near the coil and the distributor
Ok so what's an igniter then? I'm an idiot
I switched to a VE dizzy so I don't need mine anymore. Its got a heatsink already bolted to it with cpu paste. Pm me if you want it.
PM'd
The ignitor is another name given to the power transistor so that's the same.
Just going to comment on here in case anyone has the same problem. It ended up being the coil. The coil was only 3/4 years old (MSD Blaster II), but that was the fix. Also had a very faint battery light for a while, that would get brighter/flicker on hard acceleration. Replaced the alternator and now no light, all is fine. I'm thinking the bad alternator might have prematurely killed the coil.
That meant the diode bridge inside the alternator was already burned for a while. I had the same problem but had a hard time finding a shop that could find the problem and fix it, last shop rebuilt it 2 times and gave me the same problem, so instead I installed the alternator from a 2001 SE 2.0 sentra.