Dies on initial start ups
Discussion
CHIMV8 said:
UPDATE
The piece of wood i touched was not large enough
She was behaving a bit weird again on last run out,but thought it was the old paranoia again.
Anyway,took her out yesterday,and she kept stalling on start up again,and felt underpowered when eventually underway,gave her a good run before i pulled over to check dizzy and leads connection,all seemed pushed and in place.
Run again,no joy,so pulled over and disconnected/reconnected ECU,no joy
Worse thing of all i had the wife in the car,so chucked her out,and that didn't make a difference,but the silence was great
Couldnt understand,it seemed like a cylinder was down but all seemed connected......until
Lifted the bonnet again(stopped first obviously!!) and checked the leads were solid against the adapters,which they were,but while moving my hand between each plug i caught a lead slightly and it lifted off,strange,the connection looked odd compared to what i thought it should.
What dawned on me was the connection,whatever type was unstable and pointed to the running issues.
The sleeve on the HT lead was seating correctly over the extender shroud, and the metal connector in the lead was basically resting on the small metal part on the extender
Checked the rest on the plug/extender connections,and another 2 were the same........the top of the extenders had snapped all in the same spot,and left the metal in 2 parts with in the HT lead sleeve...so when they were in the connected position the surfaces were partially together...YOU CAN SEE THE 2 METAL SURFACES ON THE 1ST EXTENDER IN PIC
Since i have had her back,i have never pulled at the lead tops before only pushed to check secure,so god knows what caused this
You may think this should have been obvious,but the issue was never a constant,and the mating of the 2 pieces with in the rubber shroud seemed to hold together for some weird reason,until yesterday, when it was obvious there was more wrong than usual.
I have taken some advise from Peter J,(take away 2 connection points from the system) taken out the extenders,and connected the HT Leads direct to the plug heads,ensuring the leads are secured back from the manifolds,heat shield HT lead socks on order.
Needless to say even on a quick run out in the rain, she is a different car........where's that piece of wood again
For the record these werent cheap china products,they were from Germany.....
Well its been a while, since I went in the garage to see her.The piece of wood i touched was not large enough
She was behaving a bit weird again on last run out,but thought it was the old paranoia again.
Anyway,took her out yesterday,and she kept stalling on start up again,and felt underpowered when eventually underway,gave her a good run before i pulled over to check dizzy and leads connection,all seemed pushed and in place.
Run again,no joy,so pulled over and disconnected/reconnected ECU,no joy
Worse thing of all i had the wife in the car,so chucked her out,and that didn't make a difference,but the silence was great
Couldnt understand,it seemed like a cylinder was down but all seemed connected......until
Lifted the bonnet again(stopped first obviously!!) and checked the leads were solid against the adapters,which they were,but while moving my hand between each plug i caught a lead slightly and it lifted off,strange,the connection looked odd compared to what i thought it should.
What dawned on me was the connection,whatever type was unstable and pointed to the running issues.
The sleeve on the HT lead was seating correctly over the extender shroud, and the metal connector in the lead was basically resting on the small metal part on the extender
Checked the rest on the plug/extender connections,and another 2 were the same........the top of the extenders had snapped all in the same spot,and left the metal in 2 parts with in the HT lead sleeve...so when they were in the connected position the surfaces were partially together...YOU CAN SEE THE 2 METAL SURFACES ON THE 1ST EXTENDER IN PIC
Since i have had her back,i have never pulled at the lead tops before only pushed to check secure,so god knows what caused this
You may think this should have been obvious,but the issue was never a constant,and the mating of the 2 pieces with in the rubber shroud seemed to hold together for some weird reason,until yesterday, when it was obvious there was more wrong than usual.
I have taken some advise from Peter J,(take away 2 connection points from the system) taken out the extenders,and connected the HT Leads direct to the plug heads,ensuring the leads are secured back from the manifolds,heat shield HT lead socks on order.
Needless to say even on a quick run out in the rain, she is a different car........where's that piece of wood again
For the record these werent cheap china products,they were from Germany.....
Edited by CHIMV8 on Wednesday 30th December 13:41
With 3 cylinders running on dodge extenders for a number of miles,sacked the extenders, and connected the leads direct with thermal glove covers, and thought it best to change the plugs as no ignition in the cylinder is not going to look after the plug ends
On advice of Dave and Anthony,i bought the iridium spark plugs to replace the existing set.
Thought i'd post a pic of what the condition of the plugs are coming out of the effected cylinders.
Well, its been a testing journey, to solve this issue.
But after a 350 mile round trip yesterday to Cambridge and back,i can safely say I smiled all the way there and back, in a faultless drive.... we won't talk about the fuel mpg!!!! Heavy right foot was implemented on many occasion LoL!!
As you can read through the topic, its a process of elimination.
In the end
Due to cylinder down issues, replaced the plugs with these
Wasn't really happy with plug leads fitting directly to spark plug, and thermal socks covering them.
So joined a couple of mates and bought a set of racing leads from the USA, with ceramic boots on the ends that connect to the spark plugs, in theory the ceramic ends were replacing the defective steel plug extenders, all we had to do was cut the leads to size and crimp the ends which connect to the dizzy cap.
While removing the old leads, even though I used to check they were fully pushed into the cap, when we took them off, they came away to easily, in fact they were to loose and had no securing click sound.....2nd issue found on the idle problem..
New leads installed
Moral of the topic, never give up there is always and answer out there some where...
Now lets get the keys and give her a blast
But after a 350 mile round trip yesterday to Cambridge and back,i can safely say I smiled all the way there and back, in a faultless drive.... we won't talk about the fuel mpg!!!! Heavy right foot was implemented on many occasion LoL!!
As you can read through the topic, its a process of elimination.
In the end
Due to cylinder down issues, replaced the plugs with these
Wasn't really happy with plug leads fitting directly to spark plug, and thermal socks covering them.
So joined a couple of mates and bought a set of racing leads from the USA, with ceramic boots on the ends that connect to the spark plugs, in theory the ceramic ends were replacing the defective steel plug extenders, all we had to do was cut the leads to size and crimp the ends which connect to the dizzy cap.
While removing the old leads, even though I used to check they were fully pushed into the cap, when we took them off, they came away to easily, in fact they were to loose and had no securing click sound.....2nd issue found on the idle problem..
New leads installed
Moral of the topic, never give up there is always and answer out there some where...
Now lets get the keys and give her a blast
Excellent post Mark and I really like the look of those ceramic HT lead ends.
We now need a final summary from you, a what worked and what didn't work overview on your journey with an honest review of the parts you've used.
My personal opinion is these cars suffer from a lot of ignition woes that often go undetected because it's an 8 cylinder engine, a V8 running on 7 is hard for the untrained hear to spot and often the problem only presents itself at lower RPMs so the car can still feel strong over 2,000rpm and produce perfectly acceptable economy.
My experience is the ignition system on a standard Chimaera to be it's Achilles heel, as sorting out the immobiliser and upgrading the starter cable/earth are best things you can do to improve this car's reliability so improving the ignition system is the best thing you can do to improve drivability, idle quality & economy.
The key culprits to my mind are the dreadful spark plug extenders, these things really are the spawn of the Devil and all Chimaera owners are well advised to delete them but you must also find a solution to cooking the HT lead ends on the TVR manifolds.
The HT leads themselves are are another area that can be improved upon massively, I am a huge fan of my MSD Super Conductor leads and a huge hater of Magnecor leads which are total junk at any price and a criminally expensive for what they are (total junk).
Spark plugs are the next thing on the list, my personal experience of the original NGK B7ECS specified by TVR are that they were a very poor choice, good improvements can be had by simply moving to a far more suitable extended electrode NGK BPR6ES. The 6 heat range over the original 7 offers one improvement but it's moving from the shrouded electrode to an extended electrode design that offers the biggest advantage, and while we're on the subject of electrodes people may want to take it one step further and fit a set of NGK BPR6EIX iridium plugs which while many will claim I'm talking bull I firmly stand by them as offering further benefits still.
But lets not get too carried away with fancy parts and forget the basics of ignition maintenance, these basics should always be your starting point. Start with a new Bosh coil and a proper original Lucas (or Distributor Doctor) rotor arm followed by a decent quality distributor cap.
The distributor cap is also worthy of note because being an 8 cylinder engine it must have 8 posts, the spacing between each post is therefore much closer than say a 4 cylinder distributor cap. This tight spacing means a dry clean cap is even more essential, any condensation forming inside the cap makes for the ideal path for current to travel to the adjacent post, this will cause misfires, these micro-misfires are often so slight you cant really detect them with the human ear... but trust me they are there!
A good test is to manually lift the idle by hand at the throttle butterfly, lift the revs just off idle, on many Chimaeras you will very often find a really nasty flat spot and misfire, with a bit of practice it's actually not that hard to hold the engine in this state and just as easy to detect.
With all the quoted ignition components checked, replaced and upgraded you will definitely be fighting back against this car's key weakness, after you've followed this process (especially deleting the extenders) you should definitely feel an improvement.
The only real way to take your ignition system to the next level is to ditch the distributor altogether and go with one of the many 3D mappable systems using coil packs on wasted spark. This is where things get really interesting and I have seen the benefits myself.
Keep in mind my car burns LPG, this fuel is notoriously hard to strike and burns slower than petrol too, this puts far greater demands on the ignition system so trust me everything must be 100% spot on or LPG will punish you hard!
What I'm trying to say is if the HT leads, plugs and other ignition components I've chosen work well on 'Ol Gasbag' they will be complete overkill on your petrol Chimaera, and overkill is good in this case because you can never have "Too Good" when it comes to the ignition system on a Chimaera.
This is a great post from Mark, I hope some of my comments and experiences helped him find an improvement to the way his car now performs and I also hope others find the above helpful too.
See you all tomorrow in a field full of TVRs.
Best regards, Dave
We now need a final summary from you, a what worked and what didn't work overview on your journey with an honest review of the parts you've used.
My personal opinion is these cars suffer from a lot of ignition woes that often go undetected because it's an 8 cylinder engine, a V8 running on 7 is hard for the untrained hear to spot and often the problem only presents itself at lower RPMs so the car can still feel strong over 2,000rpm and produce perfectly acceptable economy.
My experience is the ignition system on a standard Chimaera to be it's Achilles heel, as sorting out the immobiliser and upgrading the starter cable/earth are best things you can do to improve this car's reliability so improving the ignition system is the best thing you can do to improve drivability, idle quality & economy.
The key culprits to my mind are the dreadful spark plug extenders, these things really are the spawn of the Devil and all Chimaera owners are well advised to delete them but you must also find a solution to cooking the HT lead ends on the TVR manifolds.
The HT leads themselves are are another area that can be improved upon massively, I am a huge fan of my MSD Super Conductor leads and a huge hater of Magnecor leads which are total junk at any price and a criminally expensive for what they are (total junk).
Spark plugs are the next thing on the list, my personal experience of the original NGK B7ECS specified by TVR are that they were a very poor choice, good improvements can be had by simply moving to a far more suitable extended electrode NGK BPR6ES. The 6 heat range over the original 7 offers one improvement but it's moving from the shrouded electrode to an extended electrode design that offers the biggest advantage, and while we're on the subject of electrodes people may want to take it one step further and fit a set of NGK BPR6EIX iridium plugs which while many will claim I'm talking bull I firmly stand by them as offering further benefits still.
But lets not get too carried away with fancy parts and forget the basics of ignition maintenance, these basics should always be your starting point. Start with a new Bosh coil and a proper original Lucas (or Distributor Doctor) rotor arm followed by a decent quality distributor cap.
The distributor cap is also worthy of note because being an 8 cylinder engine it must have 8 posts, the spacing between each post is therefore much closer than say a 4 cylinder distributor cap. This tight spacing means a dry clean cap is even more essential, any condensation forming inside the cap makes for the ideal path for current to travel to the adjacent post, this will cause misfires, these micro-misfires are often so slight you cant really detect them with the human ear... but trust me they are there!
A good test is to manually lift the idle by hand at the throttle butterfly, lift the revs just off idle, on many Chimaeras you will very often find a really nasty flat spot and misfire, with a bit of practice it's actually not that hard to hold the engine in this state and just as easy to detect.
With all the quoted ignition components checked, replaced and upgraded you will definitely be fighting back against this car's key weakness, after you've followed this process (especially deleting the extenders) you should definitely feel an improvement.
The only real way to take your ignition system to the next level is to ditch the distributor altogether and go with one of the many 3D mappable systems using coil packs on wasted spark. This is where things get really interesting and I have seen the benefits myself.
Keep in mind my car burns LPG, this fuel is notoriously hard to strike and burns slower than petrol too, this puts far greater demands on the ignition system so trust me everything must be 100% spot on or LPG will punish you hard!
What I'm trying to say is if the HT leads, plugs and other ignition components I've chosen work well on 'Ol Gasbag' they will be complete overkill on your petrol Chimaera, and overkill is good in this case because you can never have "Too Good" when it comes to the ignition system on a Chimaera.
This is a great post from Mark, I hope some of my comments and experiences helped him find an improvement to the way his car now performs and I also hope others find the above helpful too.
See you all tomorrow in a field full of TVRs.
Best regards, Dave
CHIMV8 said:
Well, its been a testing journey, to solve this issue.
But after a 350 mile round trip yesterday to Cambridge and back,i can safely say I smiled all the way there and back, in a faultless drive.... we won't talk about the fuel mpg!!!! Heavy right foot was implemented on many occasion LoL!!
As you can read through the topic, its a process of elimination.
In the end
Due to cylinder down issues, replaced the plugs with these
Wasn't really happy with plug leads fitting directly to spark plug, and thermal socks covering them.
So joined a couple of mates and bought a set of racing leads from the USA, with ceramic boots on the ends that connect to the spark plugs, in theory the ceramic ends were replacing the defective steel plug extenders, all we had to do was cut the leads to size and crimp the ends which connect to the dizzy cap.
While removing the old leads, even though I used to check they were fully pushed into the cap, when we took them off, they came away to easily, in fact they were to loose and had no securing click sound.....2nd issue found on the idle problem..
New leads installed
Moral of the topic, never give up there is always and answer out there some where...
Now lets get the keys and give her a blast
Where did you get the ceramic capped plug leads from, and approx cost please.But after a 350 mile round trip yesterday to Cambridge and back,i can safely say I smiled all the way there and back, in a faultless drive.... we won't talk about the fuel mpg!!!! Heavy right foot was implemented on many occasion LoL!!
As you can read through the topic, its a process of elimination.
In the end
Due to cylinder down issues, replaced the plugs with these
Wasn't really happy with plug leads fitting directly to spark plug, and thermal socks covering them.
So joined a couple of mates and bought a set of racing leads from the USA, with ceramic boots on the ends that connect to the spark plugs, in theory the ceramic ends were replacing the defective steel plug extenders, all we had to do was cut the leads to size and crimp the ends which connect to the dizzy cap.
While removing the old leads, even though I used to check they were fully pushed into the cap, when we took them off, they came away to easily, in fact they were to loose and had no securing click sound.....2nd issue found on the idle problem..
New leads installed
Moral of the topic, never give up there is always and answer out there some where...
Now lets get the keys and give her a blast
TJC46 said:
Where did you get the ceramic capped plug leads from, and approx cost please.
Note details from Jojackson4 on last pagehttp://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
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