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I have the craziest issue with my colt.
It is an 89 colt DL wagon (NON Vista), 1.8 liter SOHC (4g37) , 5 speed , awd, about 185k miles.
I got the car early last week. The only modification was a switch under the dash that turned the radiator fan on.
It ran SOMETIMES.
It would start easily every time. Had a great idle. Throttle response was great. Little bit of smoke when you first started it (valve seals I'm guessing).
Here's where it got weird. For the first couple minutes of running, it was fine, after that, if you ran it hard, it would be fine, you could wind it up through all of the gears, no problems. It would still idle good once you slowed down. BUT, if you accelerated gradually, once you got over 35, it would die. No sputtering, just died. If you waited a couple seconds, then turned the key on and off it would restart as soon as you turned the key back on. Then if you accelerated hard or stayed under 35, it would keep running. If you accelerated hard and got past 35, whatever speed you tried to maintain, 50-60-whatever... it would die, but intermittently, could be a couple seconds, could be ten minutes, but it would happen. When it happened, it would be the same thing, wait a couple seconds, turn the key off then back on and it would instantly restart. If you didn't turn the key off then back on , you could leave it in gear until the car stopped and it wouldn't start. RPM didn't matter, it would happen in any gear at any rpm.
I couldn't find any wiring issues except for the fan wiring and a broken wire on the capacitor on the distributor. I soldered that back together and it didn't make a difference.
The ecu had a label saying it had been remanufactured in 2011. I checked every fuse I could find. I was taking it for a test drive after checking some connections under the hood. Same thing happened like usual. Fine for a couple miles, then died, restarted, died again, did this a couple times. then it wouldn't restart, and hasn't restarted since.
I'm getting fuel to the fuel rail. Judging by how strong the fuel smell is after cranking for a bit, I'd have to say its getting fuel into the cylinders. I have NO spark. Checked first at the plugs, then checked at the coil.
Put a new ICM on today, still no spark.
I have power to the + lead on the coil. I checked primary and secondary resistance on the coil and both were well within specs.
The ignition relay clicks when I turn the key on, and something under the dash near the ecu (POSSIBLY the ECU itself) clicks when the key is turned to the start position. The engine cranks over normally.
CEL comes on when the key is turned on but goes off if you wait a few seconds.
What do you guys think? ECU, Ignition relay, coil (could it be bad even though the resistance tests checked ? any way to bench test a coil to make it fire?), distributor (any way to test a distributor? could the distributor be ruled out because there is no spark at the coil? or does the pickup in the distributor tell the coil when to fire?) does an 89 4g37 with a distributor and external coil have a crank angle sensor or cam position sensor or is that function the job of the distributor?)
any help would be greatly appreciated. I really love this car and have big plans for it, but I can't just throw money at it replacing parts hoping it fixes the problem. Worse yet, I don't want to be replacing parts that are going to get destroyed because I haven't fixed the problem.
Thanks everybody
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