hi folks,
well, i have some questions. thanks for offering your experience on working on these vehicles.<br><br>(this is an 84 automatic.)
short version: i had a broken (shattered) distributor rotor. with new rotor, the vehicle started, but would only stay going with heavy foot on the
gas -- letting it idle would cut out immediately. fiddled with the distributor angle back and forth and found "best" timing (without a
timing light) -- but still cuts out immediately, is very rough, missing, etc.
a mechanic who listened for a moment said it sounded like a major vacuum leak, but there's no obvious sound of air. the infamous
boot from the air filter is slightly perished on the engine side, but seems intact.
to get it home, we adjusted the idle very high so wouldn't cut out when stopped. made it home, engine ran better warm it seems.
what is the best way to diagnose further? brake cleaner all over the air system? EFI diagnostics? are there particular sensors that might be
causing problems? vacuum hoses?
could it still be the distributor? the cap seemed fine, inspected quite thoroughly. timing isn't perfect, obviously, but shouldn't be causing problems this big, should it? how would i troubleshoot the distributor further?
longer story: vehicle is almost 200k miles, has clearly been worked on before we got it recently, not in super good
shape. the automatic transmission has been jerking and shifting late (throttle cable?), and the radiator has been leaking. i was on my way
to replace the radiator with a junkyard one, when i turned left into an SUV. damn.
i was moving pretty slow, and it didn't seem like a major impact. body damage was a few dents in the bumper (passenger side) and on the grill, and broken indicator. but it didn't start at all. eventually ripped open the panel under the passenger seat, discovered the distributor rotor was smashed. replaced that, and then had the immediate stalling problem above.<br><br>the impact, slight as it was, did have some effect on the frame: the passenger door now hangs weirdly, and the "weatherstripping" at the top is outside when closed. how could a slight frame buckling affect the engine?
driving with the throttle screwed wide open (ie. "idles" at >3000 rpm in neutral) was an experience. the engine light came on at times, then went off again. also, the heater seems a bit broken: hot/cold lever seems not to work well, and air temp at max heat is
pretty lukewarm -- probably unrelated? blend door?
finally, i opened the air filter while poking around in there. there's only two clips on it, rather than the 4 there should be. but that's how it was
before, and it worked "fine". relevant?
anyway, any thoughts or suggestions on next step to diagnose the major engine roughness would be wonderful!
thanks, all.
.brush