I have a 4 cylinder 92 manual TR wagon that has an intermittent electronic problem. It has been problematic for over a year and the car can vary from running well to not starting, or cutting out completely while running.

When it cuts out the tacho drops to 0. The engine may re-start if I keep it in gear, but sometimes it just rolls to a stop.

Sometimes after it has started it will only run on a 2 - 3 cylinders, but it may then clear itself after 2 -3 kilometres, usually with a lurch and a big black cloud of smoke. This has only happened a couple of times.

I changed plugs, leads, distributor cap and rotor button and have taken it what I consider good mechanics; they have tried a number of things, including:

new coil
new ECU
new distributor
replacing some of the contacts to the ECU that were corroded.

Most of the labour has been free as they were embarrassed that they couldn't fix it.

Generally when I have work done it runs well for a while (1-2 months) and then gradually gets worse: hard to start, occasional miss or cut out ad then it gets.

After the last work (replacing the contacts) it has run well for 2 months (although for the first time the engine light now comes on 50% of the time), but now it is difficult to start again and has had 1 engine cut out.

Any suggestions would be appreciated as I am about to give up on it.

Thanks

Tim

Sounds like the same problem I had, it was bad connectors on the AFM and also the front 3 injectors.

have you had the injectors checked and cleaned check all wire connections and spray with electrical cleaner in the contacts unplug them and clean replug back together as dirty contacts will cause intermittent problems also try the wiggle test on the wires while car is running

Thanks for the advice. I've borrowed an AFM out of a friend's car and cleaned the contacts. The engine light is still on 50% of the time. I'll see how it goes. Before I did this, the old trick of removing the low tension wires into the distributor and then reconnecting it got it started again (doesn't always work, and the plug is new).

Tim

Ah the check engine light is on, awesome.

Do a search on how to check the fault codes, they will tell you what the fault is.