STILL having issues!!!

[mjr45]

After speaking with madkaw, I ended up advancing the static timing to 16-17° to get full mech advance to around 31-32° and no vacuum advance(the vacuum advance dash pot is toast). Leaving the vacuum off, the car runs great up around 5500 RPM which is good enough for me. Checking the plugs after a short 35 mile run, they were starting to get to the tan/brown color except for #3 and #6 which were still sooty looking. I changed the plugs to the BPR6ES-11(for the 79 dizzy) and I'll check later today after a 130 mi. trip and see if getting the timing sorta right will help with the mixture. Thanks for all the help, I know I'll be back with more questions(issues?).

[siteunseen]

Same here!

[mjr45]

Back again! Yesterday I took the Z for a short trip to town, car ran as usual revs up to 5500 with no stumble, no nothing. Stopped and got fuel and one other short stop, car starts right up only now the tach starts bouncing all over at anything over 3000 and sometimes stumbles sometimes doesn't, sometimes I can hear the engine revving but the tach is bouncing all over the place. It appears to me that something electrical gets warmed up and things go haywire, but what exactly, ign, module, coil, wiring? I'll check the module and coil today, but the coil is a brand new Accel. I'm beginning to think I have garage gremlins that just like to mess with my head!

[Arne]

Do you have any condensers on the ignition? Mounted to the coil, perhaps? If so, remove it and test.

[mjr45]

Thanks Arne, will do, there is one condenser mounted on the coil bracket which I left in place when I changed to the 79 dizzy, but I'm not sure if it is in the ignition circuit, but I'll definitely take it off and see what happens. It did the same thing this AM ran great until it got a little hot under the hood, then boom back to weirdness.

[Zed Head]

If the engine runs fine and it's just the tachometer that's weird then a condenser/capacitor might help. But if the engine runs weird also, that is a sign of a bad ignition module. Mine would run fine until I too it over ~3000 RPM, then it would behave (the ignition module) like you describe. The tachometer read too high, and the engine ran rough and would barely idle. If I turned the engine off, it would fix itself, until I took it over 3000 RPM again.

[mjr45]

Arne, I took off the condenser and ran the car and it ran fine with no issues, but I only ran it for about 10 minutes(long enough to get heat under the hood). The tach was steady up to 5500. Thanks.

Zed, I read somewhere this AM that the module should read 400 Ohms +/- 40 and mine read somewhere around 1200, I think its bad. I also checked my TPS and it failed(wouldn't read any continuity or continuity) when checked at the ECU connector, and while that may not have much to do with the goofy running, it sure might help with the rich running condition.

Edited May 7, 2014 by mjr45

[Arne]

Arne, I took off the condenser and ran the car and it ran fine with no issues, but I only ran it for about 10 minutes(long enough to get heat under the hood). The tach was steady up to 5500. Thanks.

Is just a guess. I fought a similar problem on my 240Z with electronic ignition, and finally determined that the original condenser on the coil on my car was either bad, or connected wrong. Once I eliminated the condenser all was good. Not certain this applies to your situation, but it sounds much the same.

[mjr45]

Back again, took the Z out yesterday and the gremlins are back, ran OK yo to about 3500 then the tach went crazy and al kinds of stumbling from the engine. When it got warm after a 10 minute drive, the problem got worse, so I'm going to town and try to get a GM HEI module and see what happens. Wish me luck. I know I'll have to retard the timing a bit, getting some light backfires thru the exhaust.

Mike

[mjr45]

Just as a way to close out this thread, I bought a GM HEI module, but I thought that before I wired it all up, I would pull the e12-80 module off and give a real close look over. I cleaned up all the connections and the ground points and then noticed that one of the connectors in the wire harness was kinda goofy looking, so I made a new wire harness and connected it up, I retarded the timing slightly to about 15-16° and voila' the car ran great, two days in a row with nary a miss or stumble, just goes to show, pay attention to the small details first. Thanks for all the help.

Mike

[madkaw]

Glad you found it. Yep the little things bite you in the a$$

[Captain Obvious]

Cool! Sounds like you finally got it licked? How long till you really trust it and blow the "all clear" whistle?