Hi.

Developed in last couple of weeks intermittent misfire under load. Only 3rd 4th 5th gear. Regular garage has changed distributor cap and rotor arm, which I thought had at first cured the problem after 500 mile trouble free drive to the Scottish Highlands.

Today, a wet day, it started again. Surely it's not as simple as climate?

Happened x3 times in one short drive. First a cough, then a bit of judder. Then, typically, on a test drive, trying to force the fault under acceleration, it failed to materialise.

Have looked on other threads and seen suggestions such as coil pack, clean throttle body, disconnecting battery to reset ECU (?) and temperature sensor.

When I first had the car, I had the thermostat replaced, but that was over 1.5 years ago and no misfire until now. Temperature gauge normal running reading does read lower than my previous similar 1.6 Felicia.

Not an amateur mechanic but understand the principles. Any help and suggestions welcome as have to get this car 500 miles home to The Midlands next week.

Cheers

Edited 31 March, 201511 yr by DampandDust

Additional info 2000 plate. Car is regularly serviced by garage to schedule and is low mileage only 67k, doing less than 10k per year currently.

Edited 31 March, 201511 yr by DampandDust

Try some leads on it....

The symptoms are consistent with high-voltage arcing. Distributor cap, rotor cracks or moisture/dirt, carbon brush wear, cracked HV leads, cracks in spark plugs, wrong gap. Start simple with a very close, thorough visual inspection of parts mentioned. If nothing seems wrong use the methods below.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-A00odZdfo&hd=1

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkEawBEfM70&hd=1

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f9Qxmhc10s&hd=1

Edited 1 April, 201511 yr by RicardoM

Hi,

 

Just as a follow up to this topic.

 

I tried a solution that I found on another thread - disconnect battery overnight.

 

Its an option that cost nothing and SO FAR it has worked.

 

Thank you for all the suggestions and help.

I wouldn't call that a fix, my guess is it will do it again when least desired (Murphy's law).

 

I will advance 2 hypotheses based on my previous knowledge on ECUs from other type of cars.

 

1) The owner is using the car mostly for city driving to work and back. No high speeds, no high loads, just boring short trips. Then a longer trip comes and the car starts acting crazy. Why? The computer 'learned' that slow type of driving and a sudden high load and high speed is confusing it.

 

2) There are cold solder joints inside ECU.

In my experience of these cars the fault will most likely be with the hall sensor in the distributor or the ignition coil.

Misfire under the load of higher gears makes me think of an ignition problem.

The 1.6 is known for weak stem seals. Get uour spark plugs out and make sure there's no oil on them.

Misfire under the load of higher gears makes me think of an ignition problem.

The owner has been advised repeatedly about that in previous posts. We didn't get any reaction...

Hi,

 

In reply to various posts - thanks to all for replying.

 

This car sits mostly in the week, but gets long journeys at the weekend.

 

To Ricardo M - I haven't tried any other fix yet, because the problem hasn't recurred. It's been over a month now and no recurrence of the problem. I'm not assuming its fixed yet but I'm hopeful..

Edited 4 May, 201511 yr by DampandDust