Reinstalled my injectors with new seals, replaced gas line, and secured all the vacucum lines on my 74 1.8 and it ran beautifull---so good, I was all over town today having a blast. I was running through the gears shifting around 4,000 rpm when the car started to act like it was running on 3 rather than 4 cylinders.

I checked under the engine lid and everything looked in order, no loose hoses or spark plug wires that were loose. I even checked under the distributor cap to see if the campufire came loose--nothing.

I figure I'll look at in the AM when I'm fresh...meanwhile I'm having some brewskys hoping nothing to serious has happen.

Where would you go from here to see what has happened??? My thoughts were to idle it up high enough to keep it running and then pull one spark plug wire at a time to see if one of the cylinders is not firing. Then what??

burned a spark plug? a wire?

That would be my guess.

4k is a little low for running through the gears.....

If you think one cylinder is not firing, after you start it up and it hasn't run too long, check the temperature of the exhaust pipes near the muffler. If one isn't firing, the pipe will be cold. I did this when setting up some poor running carbs. At least you will know which cylinder it is.

Spoke

I'd say SPW not on right or gone. Are you running the small Compufire kit or the one with the 60,000 volt coil deal. I have one of them and am looking to slaping it in. Iwas wondering if all the parts installed correctly if you have the big kit. The spark plug wires are also heavier for the high voltage deal and have the wrong cap ends so they need to be cut and refitted with the screw on 914 plug end/rubber cap. If you didn't get good contact with your wire installation, then you would have this spark problem. If you use your old or original wires, then you would burn your wires up with the extra voltage perhaps.

I just bought the Compufire distributor kit and purchased a blue coil to go with. I didn't change the plug wires (actually I did--they sold me a kit but two of the wires were way too short---bug shop--that's another story). The kit has been running beautifully for a month or so.

Sorry for the ignorgance...what is "SPW"? I presume you are referring to the magnetic pickup that goes in the distributor. How can you tell if this part has gone bad?

Hopefully my problem is spark related--I guess I was thinking I messed-up something mechnical, like a valve or something. Although, no funning noises.

If you can not find the problem between the plug wires and spark plugs you can run a compression test to rule out other possible issues. Hopefully it is as simple as a plug wire

I am guessing SPW = Spark Plug Wire

Check the fuel injector plugs. Wiggle the connectors and see if one begins to fire. I used to have one that would wiggle loose once in a while.

Update
Pulling each plug wire at the distributor led me to find no difference in rpm when #2 was umplugged.

Checked the spark plug wire--good

Pulled spark plug--sparking just fine

Oh no...must be no compression or gas.

Bought a compression tester and checked all cylinders---All OK. Each cylinder was within 10 psi of each other. Actually I was suprised how low the compression is in a 1.8--100psi.

Hmmm...must be gas

Pulled offending cylinder's injector...Ah, ha! Injector clip appeared attached but had worked its way loose...I guess I didn't have it properly attached.

On the road again....
Thanks all