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View Full Version : '97 rada stalling intermittently



ali1988
22-12-2009, 06:53 PM
Hi guys,

Been reading up on about a dozen older threads about stalling and most ppl mention battery/TPS/ICS/BEM looms. However, these people also seem to all have problems with stalling after starting and at idle. Mine however stalls when idling AND driving at 60. When hot and when cold (though it stalled a shitload today which was 35 degrees, maybe more when hot?). Stalls under both petrol and LPG. When it stalls it typically stays stalled until i pull over and restart engine. a couple times it kicked back up itself after a few seconds though. I don't hear any relays clicking or anything like some other peeps mentioned when it stalls, just tacho drops to zero and i have to pull over and restart. Engine restarts everytime on first crank however it is rougher than usual for about the first second.

This problem started yesterday when it stalled in a car park at 5kph. 2km's later stalled at 60kph. another couple km's later stalled again at speed. Drove it another 2 hours and 140kms later that night and it didn't stall at all =S.

Today it stalled 6 times on way back from gas mechanic which is a 5km trip. He said all gas stuff is working fine and he couldn't get it to stall when test driving (bit ironic). Noticed it stalls pretty frequently at idle today, like within 2-3 minutes of starting.

I should probably mention that i had almost this exact same problem a couple months ago. turned out to be my crank sensor. got it replaced, as well as high tension leads and sparks. Also have a new distributor from another problem. so doubt its any of the above. The original stalling would kick itself back up most of the time, this very rarely does that. The original stalling also made it very hard to restart engine, would never start on first crank. This starts without hesitation.

i have a feeling maybe there's a loose connection either to the crank sensor or somewhere else, coz my car rides REALLY hard, and i drive along pretty shit bone-rattling roads to work every day, so it'd be pretty easy for something to shake itself loose.

What do you guys reckon? My mechanic is on holidays til the 11th, but he can check the car out very quickly tomorrow morning. This is why i'd really appreciate any leads you guys have so he can waste less time and hopefully diagnose the problem quickly.


P.S. My car has done 256,000kms. Someone mentioned a damaged ECU in anothet thread. Where is this and is it easy to remove and check? My gas has its own ecu though, would this bypass the original? If so then it isn't an ecu problem as it stalls under both fuels.

Magna diver
23-12-2009, 03:33 PM
Maate,
some of the things previously mentioned on the forum for checking are:

Battery condition;
BEM plug connections -under dash near drivers right knee - poor connectivity at the connection plug-brown wire from momory = problems similar to yours; and
Ignition switch key antenna wire connector plug - poor connection = difficulty reading the chip in the key = problems similar to yours

Cheers

Madmagna
23-12-2009, 04:38 PM
Stalling at 60 is not bem related, simple to test, remove the bem when you are holding revs, the car should keep running.

First bet is to do a fault code test, I do doubt you will flash up anything but is worth the try. It is very possible you have had a faulty part installed so things like CAS, dist and modules etc need to be checked.

Doubt is anything like leads as if anything you would get a misfire

A clue is the fact it does it on gas so that rules out the fuel system.

If you can, hook up a volt guage so you can see it internally when driving, take particular note of the voltage when it stalls, if it is dropping below 11v approx all the relays will shut down and cause the issue you have

ali1988
25-12-2009, 05:19 PM
hey guys,

thanks for the help!

turns out it was my distributor. I forgot that the last time my distributor died, they swapped dads one into mine and the new one went into his car. So this time around it was his one that actually died in my car. Got a brand new distributor installed and its been running great since =)