my car hates me, runs rough, backfires, smokes, help!

[tastyratz]

ok guys heres whats goin on, i just dropped in a new ka into my car since the one in it was messed, and this ka needed a headgasket changed. i put a new hg on it then threw it in. the car seems all wired up from what i can see, and i timed the distributor according to tdc rotor pointing to the front, etc. i put the chain and the cams on exactly the same way they seemed setup on my friends ka while he was over. the car starts and idles around 900 rpm, it seems to run somewhat decently but when i put the pedal in a little rpm drops instead of gains. if i give it alot the car will actually backfire a little bit. if im careful with it i can slowly give it just a tiny bit of pedal and work my way up to like 1500rpm at which that point i can rev it freely with light gas and its only lightly hesitant. it still backfires if i give it more than about 30% pedal and starts dropping but its less prone and will rev. if i rev it about say 3500 rpm all the lights in the car get muuuuuuuuuuuuch brighter. at that point if i let off the pedal at all it drops down and idles around 250 rpm barely chugging along. even if i carefully gas it up just a little bit it still drops back down to nothing. car warms up a little over the halfway mark but with no fan its not that bad to do that. it will stay on for a bit too. when i shut it off smoke starts coming out the intake. do you guys think im off a tooth with my timing chain install? any ideas?

[tastyratz]

ok guys i REALLY need help with this and im gonna paste in my posts from another forum to keep it all up to date. i know its long but PLEASE help and read!!!


alright that wasnt it the distributor was fine and i wasnt off 180*. The car ran great the other day after i charged the battery and put stuff back together.... till i got stranded like 1 1/4 mile away from the house. i tried pushing the car but 1/4 mile later the road started going uphill so i walked the rest of the way akwardly carrying the battery. battery died and then car died so my alternator must be the culprit of everything. that would explain alot if the car runs great at first and then stops running so well then dies with no lights. im going to try swapping it out today and see how she goes.

k i swapped out the alternator and it isnt exactly running any different. i did notice one thing however. i also changed my fuel filter today and it looked like it was full of watered down milk!!!! what can cause that??? the car had been sitting for a good 6 months or so in my back yard, could that have made it milky? so i drove the car down the street to get some gas and filled it up with 12 gallons of 93 octane hoping to dilute and fix the gas in there. the car was at about halfway point for heat on the way up. i havent hooked up my clutch fan yet but over the course of about a half mile or so and a 1-2 minute drive my temp gauge shot all the way up to completely overheated top of the gauge! i know of people who drive with no clutch fan at all and dont really have a problem, with it so why did my car overheat so fast!?!?!? this thing is driving me nuts!!

ok i put in some gas line antifreeze thinking it could be water or something somehow and ran the car for about an hour. the car would barely run as usual so i put a screwdriver in the throttle body to keep it at about 2 grand. that should have cleared out any residue in the lines and some in the tank. i did notice however that there was alot of smoke coming out of behind the cylinder head area. my transmission tunnel seemed as if it was lined with greese so i assumed it could be just burning the crap off, could it be anything else? any other ideas? im going to run a compression check tomorrow, maybe i should get a leakdown tester???


ok i ran the compression check and got the following results front to back : 172 178 165 174, cylinders 1 and 3 had a bit of oil on the brand new plugs i just put in andd cylinder 4s plug was dripping with gas. any ideas on this guys? i wouldnt get compression numbers that high if i was off a link with the timing chain right??? with the oil on the plugs 1&3 do you think i have bad rings??? is anyone reading this now can someone help i need to be able to drive myself to work! please guys...

[kcolyer27]

my car backfires :)

[F3600]

try to look for timing with a timing gun ...

did you hook up the engine ground.. ? its very important if the ground is not here or is a bad one your engine gonna run like crap. And last do a Self check on the ecu to see if something is running bad

good luck

PS: kcolyer27 :im sure my car backfires more then yours Lol :naughty:

[240-porkchop-sx]

Well i've had some probs similar in the past...heres a couple things to check if u haven't yet.

- make sure plug wires are conducting, with no cracks (otherwise once the heat in the engine bay gets really hot it can expand the wire and cause no spark...either missing or back firing)
- coil and cap +rotor (which u did)
- check the resistance of the fuel injectors...should be around 11 kohms...
- check vacuum lines for cracks, etc


I have a feeling your injector #4 could be failing, causing an "abundance" of fuel to build up, and your plug gets soaked! Injectors are a known prob....ask s13girl all about it...shes the pro (or west) OR search =P.

**** AND CHECK THE GROUND, have a secondary as well!! ****

heres a link to my thread that may help you out...
http://www.zilvia.net/f/showthread.php?p=482056#post482056

good luck