Naughty elise

[noblesparky]

Help, I have a series 1 elise with rover engine,has been as reliable as day and night for years, this morning the sun didn't come up, I started it and it keeps running but seems under powered, when you lift off to change gear we get horrible rattleing from the engine, sometimes on startup it back fires etc. With my head under the bonnet the noise definately seems to come from the injector area.

Any ideas

[Sam_68]

Very difficult to diagnose these sorts of things from someone's description on the internet, but first thing I'd be inclined to do is a compression test to make sure that the 'rattle' and mis-fire isn't the result of a dropped or sticking valve.

[noblesparky]

Just an update, I started it up again and then took each of the plug leads off in turn and each time the engine ran rougher i.e 3 cylinders, rev it up and it sounds like a bag of spanners is being shaken about but the noise definately comes from the area of the fuel injection rail, also when you rev it up there is a real "bark" from the exhaust.

[stinkysteve]

It's possible your timing belt had jumped.

I just say this from experience as the symptoms sound the same as when mine did the above.

First thing to check generally though would be Dizzy/coil packs and HT leads.

[noblesparky]

lots of spark coming from HT leads when you pull them off so coil i think is ok, new leads a couple of months ago, would that cause horrible noise from injectors and any simple marks that you can easily see for alignment

[Gad-Westy]

Are you certain its from the head area and not a dropped bearing?