Hey everyone
I took my car for a ride today to run some errands. I had some fun with it going through the gears, and "stretched its legs" but nothing too crazy. well i didn't notice any problems on the drive back home, other than at one point the engine sort of stuttered then cleared up. Then I parked it at home. After sitting for about 4 hrs (its about 28 degrees F here right now) outside, I go to start it up and the car runs terribly, but the fuel pump was priming and everything. I checked the oil and it is just above the bottom line (I'll be filling that, but having that level of oil shouldn't affect anything?). Its like i get in and give it gas to keep it from stalling if i keep the revs up it doesnt fall off, but is misfiring. All my plugs are tight and the plug wires look fine, but I am dissapointed because i wanted to take the car out for another spin tonight. Could it be the WUR or maybe even the fuel pump? I didn't think things would change so quickly after sitting there for a little bit. Tomorrow I'm going to check the plugs, but this has me sort of worried.

Thanks,
AJ

PS Also i noticed while driving the car today that when i would be near WOT, it seemed like the power fell off a little bit...it was like when the WOT switch engaged I lost power...could that switch be malfunctioning?

Had the same problem and turns out it was misfiring or not firing in one of the cylinders. I couldn't have the air conditioner on because the engine would bog down so much. I felt like a 318:stickoutt

Mine starts hard also, having been parked for awhile, after some 6500 to 7000 blasts. I know these things will suck in the oil through the valve cover hose at high RPM's. This is how the fuel Dist. gets all mucked up with oil.

After one day at auto-X (long track), mine smoked for about 15 minutes or when leaving before it cleared up and stopped smoking. I'm talking heavy thick blue smoke - thought I had broke something.

Mine starts hard also, having been parked for awhile, after some 6500 to 7000 blasts. I know these things will suck in the oil through the valve cover hose at high RPM's. This is how the fuel Dist. gets all mucked up with oil.

After one day at auto-X (long track), mine smoked for about 15 minutes or when leaving before it cleared up and stopped smoking. I'm talking heavy thick blue smoke - thought I had broke something.

Alright, maybe ill just ride it out. I'll check out that valve cover breather hose and the plugs tomorrow. At least i found out how much quicker the car is when i actually shift close to redline, ive mostly babied it (even in autox) until today when i figured it was time to rev the thing to see how it does. Maybe i'll be regretting it :rolleyes .

Oh well, thanks for the advice guys.

did you check the wires at the distributor cap? On mine the coil wire doesn't make good contact for some reason (cap and wires are Bosch) and sometimes it will pop out and the car will miss at high RPMs.....

i ended up checking a few things over...one of the things i checked was the fuel pump relay and fuse. Well i jockied the fuse around and now its working. Yesterday I thought i could hear the pump still priming, but this morning when i went to start it, it wasnt priming, so thats what prompted me to look at the fuse and relay. One interesting thing to note though is that the fuse holder is quite warm there...i should probably just go through and change all my fuses, i wouldnt want this to happen on the road.

thanks for the suggestions guys.
AJ

Your stock motor isn't producing any power above 6500 rpm.

i suppose i spoke too soon about this being fixed. Last night i took the car for a ride because i wanted to make sure everything was in order before taking it to work this morning (its been below 10 degrees F the past few nights, and I haven't driven the car since the weekend). The car started right up yesterday night and ran awesome at the beginning. On the way home though, it would flutter every so often while cruising...same exact things that were happening the last time i drove it. Well this time i thought it was an ignition issue, so i checked the plugs....#2 plug is LOOSE. I thought i was screwed because I dont want to deal with a stripped plug hole. Anyways, I tightened that plug back up so I dont think it got stripped, but when i went to start up the car this morning it started and ran fine for about 2 min then it just died (this is at 5:30). So i tried to start it again and didnt hear the in-tank pump priming...so i checked the fuse again. The wierd thing was, when i pulled the fuse and cleaned it then put it back in, i saw a small arc between the fuse and the holder...could that mean i have a wire grounding out somewhere or a bad fuel relay? I dont think my fuel pumps are bad, unless one of the failure modes is "working intermittently", and the car starts but runs really really bad. I could also hear the buzzing under the hood (from the lambda control injector?) for about 2 seconds after the motor would die...could that also be flooding my motor at the idle rpms?

Thank you to the people who have been helping me!

AJ

The fuel pump relay can be intermittant. I had one that would give the flutter effect that you describe prior to failing. This is a known bad part. I always travel with a tested good FP relay in the glovebox.

The fuel pump relay can be intermittant. I had one that would give the flutter effect that you describe prior to failing. This is a known bad part. I always travel with a tested good FP relay in the glovebox.

I think I have another one that came in a bin full of misc parts...is this one of the relays mounted on the firewall? ...i'll just check my manual when i get home. Thanks for the suggestion bruce.

On the 323 it is mounted to the fusebox. It is an odd tall relay and extremely expensive for what it is.

On the 323 it is mounted to the fusebox. It is an odd tall relay and ridicously expensive for what it is.

I think i see that relay, it's taller than the others and unmarked. I also notice that the relay schematic itself is a little different than usual relays. Anyways, I cleaned the contacts on that and it started right up. while it was running though, i wanted to find where the frequency valve or lambda controlled injector was located...well i found the buzzing valve and noticed a cobbled together connector going to it (it had 3 zip ties holding it stationary). So i played with that junction there and the car almost died...so maybe THIS is my problem...being a bad connection, or just an addition to a failing relay. It could also be the reason why my car dies when i do 180 corners in autocross. When it gets warmer out im going to totally replace that connector. Anyways, here's a picture of what im talking about:

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c143/cornstar43/zzP1040031.jpg

Thanks for your help bruce.

So many of the e21s's problems can be traced to bad grounds, corroded connections or DAPO wiring.