Engine/Fuel System Problems

[strat]

Hi all,
After two years of almost problem-free Chim ownership I suddenly have developed my first problem. It started when I was driving home one day, doing about 35, and the engine just stopped running!! No warning or anything, just stopped. The next day was worse. I started her up and sat in the car park for five mins and she was running perfectly. Then, when i started to drive, the car started behaving badly. Her idling RPM was extremely erratic, and she stalled if i didn't keep some pressure applied on the gas pedal. Then, when i took her out it was clear that there hardly any power getting to the engine. CHanging into second there was so little pull it was if i'd gone straight to fifth. It also sounded very rough indeed. Well I perservered for a couple of miles then came back, but on the way back she started running nicely again. Took her to the garage where - surprise surprise - she didn't run badly at all. SO they couldn't diagnose the prob!! The garage owner doesn't tink its an ecu prob. He seems to think its more likely a temp sensor job... Wondering if any of you have experienced anything similar?
By the way, its a 1995 Chim 500.
Thanks, Kev.
ps Sorry for the length of message!!!

[chriswren]

I am having exactly the same problem..... if not a little worse. It is going in for a service this weekend (non TVR garage) and would be nice to give them some idea of where to look.

Cheers

Chris

[wixer]

Had a similar problem with my Griff 500 earlier in the year. Talking to a guy a work, he suggested checking out all the earthing points on the car. I checked all these and generally went through all the visible wiring and cleaned up any dirty connections. The worst one was the small bullet connector from the airflow meter. Never had the problem again till last Friday, then a mate suggested checking the injector earthing point on the inlet manifold, one I'd never noticed the first time. Not driven the car since so can't comment on whether everythings fine now.

[tvrtim]

From your description of the problem I would suspect the Lamda sensors. Could be one or both.About £135 each fitted.Take car to a MOT station and have the CO2 levels checked.If they are all over the place the Lamda sensors are probably shot.

[shpub]

tvrtim said:

From your description of the problem I would suspect the Lamda sensors. Could be one or both.About £135 each fitted.Take car to a MOT station and have the CO2 levels checked.If they are all over the place the Lamda sensors are probably shot.

Or it overfuelling, the cat is blocked, the engine is coked up etc. Lamda sensor failure is tracked by the ECU and will come up on the ECU fault code. As TVR specialists usually have these gizmos, should be relatively straight forward to find. Taking the car to a non-TVR garage could be a big waste of time as a result.

Don't try the trial and error route as it is expensive and very often there is no return.