Hoffman5982

First off, let me apologize for posting a help me thread, but I have a very important event in 2 days and am desperate to get this car fixed.

A little back story on the issue and specs of the car:

89 coupe chassis, originally manual.
92 ka24de w/ s14 intake mani(if that matters) and manual de harness. Hotwired ignition coil(same as how you hotwire fuel pump for constant 12v), and coil relocated to power steering pump location(running manual converted rack and single belt conversion). Megan headers. Running 89 cluster with the wire from the coil to tach signal. EGR is all deleted, as well as the butterfly valve solenoid and all the useless vacuum lines running under the intake mani.

So 2 weeks ago I found the plug wire going from the distributor to the coil sitting against the header. I zip tied it away from it but noticed the wire was hard and cracked where it touched. It drove fine but started intermittently cutting out for a split second(tach would drop to zero and come back on). This started happening more and I decided to check the wire. I had zip tied it to the oil dip stick. I went to grab it, with the car running like an idiot, and touched the cracked part and shocked the sh** out of myself. Found it was arcing against the dip stick tube. I wrapped electrical tape around it til I got a new wire and it drove fine on the way home.

That was a week ago.Today I drove it for the first time since to my parents house to use their garage to prep the car for the event. Halfway there the car started cutting out again like before, I figured it was the plug wire again. I noticed when I hit a bump it would cut out. Then it cut out and stayed out for a few seconds, and came back on. Finally it cut out and didn't come back on, so I pulled over. Thinking it was the wire I called a ride and went and picked up a new wire, took it back and threw it on and nothing. It will run, but its missing terribly(I think it's running on 2 cylinders), and if I give it gas it just dies. So I pulled it to my parents and started checking stuff. I will list what I tried:

-Checked the relay for the coil hotwire, its fine.
-Put new spark plug wires along with the new coil wire, no change
-Known good distributor, no change.
-Pulled the fuel rail off my running s14, regulator and all, no change
-Checked fuel pressure, 43psi when primed and stays, 40psi when running on 2 cylinders, rises when blipping throttle.
-Has a 1 week old z32 fuel filter on it.
-Checked the few vacuum hoses I have(deleted all the redundant stuff) and didn't see any cracks or anything.


Now, I also put fresh spark plugs in and the car started and idled good, but if I gave it gas it would rev a little but start missing. Within a minute it progressively started running shitty again, I assume as the plugs started fouling out.

After calling it a night over there I picked up another ecu(auto 81 code) and another ignition coil(comes with icm as well). I'm going to try those tomorrow, and if they don't work I'll throw a new coolant temp sensor on and then start tearing into the wiring harness.

I'm pretty confident it's an ignition system issue due to the tach immediately dropping to zero. In the past when it's running and I pull the fuel pump fuse, the tach stays at its proper rpm til it dies. So I'm pretty sure I've narrowed down to the general area that the problem exists. Like I said, I'm desperate to get it running so I figured I'd get all the input I can. This car has ran for 3 years with constant beating and has never let me down before now.

Thank you in advance!

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AllThingsGravy

All I got is its the ecu. If not I have no idea. Good luck with that. Hopefully it didn't short something in the harness!

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Hoffman5982

Yeah I'll try the ecu tomorrow. Do you think the plug wire arcing could short the wiring to the coil? I figured it would have just killed the coil or icm

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KAT-PWR

Where in fl? Pm me...

Check the connector the the ignitor/coil. There is a rubber insulator that can cause the plug to not seat correctly. Also the ignitor could be the issue

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MRP Manufacturing

Hoffman5982

Well I got it fixed. I tried all of those sensors to no avail, then I got it to start and idle well by completely unplugging the iacv. It would run shitty for 10 seconds then Rev out because I had the gas pedal pressed, then it would idle. I let it sit and run for a few and it eventually started missing and died. Eventually got it running again and immediately start tugging on wires. It start missing badly but kept idling, barely, and when I tugged on the injector section it immediate smoothed out. I started wiggling it and would get it to start missing, then pull it back and it would smooth out. So I think I've found where I need to start tearing into.

What's interesting is both my first s14 and the second one had wiring issues in this exact same section. At least I know what I'm getting into lol.

Thank you guys for the suggestions. I really appreciate it more than you know.

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