1973 1.7. Running fine all day, then looses power and starts misfiring... Now trouble starting and when it does it idles, roughly at 2000 rpm..

Condensor??

Ever thought about a pertronix ingition unit in the car. other wise how about some more info. - Carb vs. injection any other mods?

Haven't thought about a pert'. May do now though!!

Car is totally standard with D-jet.

I doubt a condesor would do that. Stuck mechanical advance in the dizzy or vacuum leak would be my guess.

Hey Rod,

Of course checking out all the electrics is a must, especially if water has gotten into them.

If all checks out to be GOOD and your engine had D-Jet F.I., the symptoms you describe are very close to what I experienced when the set of F.I. points (in the distributor, BELOW the ignition points) went bad. The contact surfaces become pitted like ignition points. In this early design electronic F.I. system, the points are used to create the timing pulses to synch the F.I. to the engine. The points are still available, but on this side of the pond are quite pricey: The best price I could find was $113.32.

Best of luck,

Terry

check your grounds may have become loose :

It could simply be points need adjustment. I forget about that cause one of the first thing I did was to put a compu fire in it.

Thankyou all. Back home now after being recovered back home (a 60 mile trip) It's the first time in 3 years that the teener has ever let me down and today it's had it's first journey on a flatbed and it was still getting thumbs up from drivers passing by

The recovery driver said he was going to try and find one to buy, he loved it so much!

My first point of call will be change the points and condenser and I will look at the F.I points. I checked for vac leaks at the roadside and couldn't find anything, but of course I'll cover those bases too..

It had in fact had a set of points and condenser fitted last summer, and as I say it was driving really well and then started to splutter, almost as if the advance in the dizzy was stuck open as underthetyre said above..

It's one of those problems that just needs to be worked through, earths checked etc.. fun fun fun!

If the engine is screwed and it's dropped a valve or two I'll get a 2270 hardcore engine bolted up

I'll run through exactly what happened - it may remind one of you Djet experts of something.. Motorway miles this morning - faultless, running really well for an hour or so, then lost power very briefly and then kicked back in - no problem, weird, but carried on. Then it did it again a bit further on, and jumped from having a rough missfire to running perfectly alternately for about five minutes sitting in traffic.. It was either rough as a bag of cats or perfect. when running badly if I dipped the clutch and revved it it would pop out of its' bad mood and behave again, but only for a short period before it threw it's toys out of the pram again.. so sounds electrical to me..

I had similar problems when I had FI, it turned out to be my old cracked ignition switch. After buying a new switch, it took me 1 1/2 to replace and I was back in business. P.S. make sure if decide to replace it buy from a repitable vendor, they are not all the same. Guess how I know. Mike

Ah, fascinating - the ignition switch has seemed to be playing up recently - it works, but I have to turn it off and then spin all the way round to get the starter to crank - if you just move from ignition on position to further round nothing happens - it wont crank, I have to turn off and turn all the way round again with more vigour...

So when this fault occured this afternoon when sitting at the side of the road I played with the key in the switch backwards and forwards ever so slightly whilst running to see if it cut the engine and it didn't.. so maybe it could be a problem, maybe not??

Fix the ignition switch, they fail. My car had been running awesome for some time , went into a liquor store came out no start. Ignition switch.

Your other problems seems electrical, loose connection, .. I had simular sputtering and wierd idles even with electronic igntion and it was electrical connections
, spark, timing, all injector firing no loose plugs ect., vac leak would cause high idle but not the intermitent power loss and trouble starting or holding any idle..

the high idle at 2000 rpm is a clue, if it is caused by ingition, then a high idle would indicate too much advance, so with a timing light, make sure your advance is nice and steady.

other failures of ignition would not cause a high rpm. vacuum leaks woudl cause a hgih idle generally ignition failure would not (unless the failure mode is too much advance. give the mechanical advance, vaccum retard a once over.

also probably time to test the head temp sendor (since it is intermittant, wiggle the wire as you ohm it out) you might have more than one problem at the same time???? and my favorite D-jet failure is intermittant head temps sendor, easy to test, painless really.


dont see how a fualty condensor would increase rpms at idle, but wrong / drifting timing would be a thing to look at

I have found pitted ignition points to strand me temporarily, scrape and file clean with a knife and we are back in business, always. If I remember right I think every 1000 miles points need maintenance. Not sure about the FI points maintenance schedule.