1972 Granada Mk1 coupe build - Still going... 14-10-2024

[blackpopracing]

Pins poked through the insulation will work Alex.

As they batch fire (according to post above) you only really need to check one injector to see if its firing/open fully or closed.

Once you know what its doing it will be easier to look for the problem.

I had this issue a few years ago on my injected Chevy engine - turns out it was a simple fault of the insulation chafed on the injector loom grounding to earth which put the injectors wide open & flooding the engine - took me 9 weeks of breakdowns to finally accidentally find the fault. The LED light would have told me straight away what the problem was - but I did not know that at the time.

If yours are wide open then its a ground issue (assuming yours work by grounding to open them).

If they are closed it's a power issue.

If they are firing it's a fuel issue.

[eurogranada]

Jan 24, 2023 9:17:36 GMT spot said:

Alex, Happy to read the car still starts and runs - Sorry to read you are still having issues after such attention to detail...
I wondered if you had any spare C110 connecters (populated with pins) that you could fashion an 'interuptor' that woud allow you to probe the signals more simply. Without an availbale connector, only pins; could you perhaps fashion 'pigtails jumpers' to breakout the connector block?

"Wear two jumpers and get back out in the garage you ***!"

Thanks Paul! Good to see you're still around (suppose you got my message)!

Yes, problems... I believe someone tried to ease me into that event happening, only that person questioned my workmanship and quality control process and placed blame even before the fact with my new section of wiring. LOL! I still seriously suspect the green bit I was told was a-ok by someone who measured it through.

Hm, you offer up a good suggestion. I DO have these connectors spare. Multiple if I'm not mistaken. I could maybe do something with those. I could make an in between section that I can play with. Not too bad an idea. I'll have to let that sink in a bit, have a think about it.

[eurogranada]

Jan 24, 2023 13:20:01 GMT blackpopracing said:

Pins poked through the insulation will work Alex.

As they batch fire (according to post above) you only really need to check one injector to see if its firing/open fully or closed.

Once you know what its doing it will be easier to look for the problem.

I had this issue a few years ago on my injected Chevy engine - turns out it was a simple fault of the insulation chafed on the injector loom grounding to earth which put the injectors wide open & flooding the engine - took me 9 weeks of breakdowns to finally accidentally find the fault. The LED light would have told me straight away what the problem was - but I did not know that at the time.

If yours are wide open then its a ground issue (assuming yours work by grounding to open them).

If they are closed it's a power issue.

If they are firing it's a fuel issue.

Well that at least gives me some options on moving forward. I can do this test on the green wiring after the central connector and if not conclusive I can always repeat with the intake off.

I believe the BOB engine is not batch fired but individually, given the six individual ecu feeds to the injectors and one common connection. The EEC-V does tend to switch things on by grounding them internally. Given the diagram showing the common wire to come from the fusebox it would not be a stretch to think this is the power side and the ecu is switching the other wire to ground.

Hopefully tonight I get a bit of time on the car. I can trace the original engine loom to see how and where the injectors are linked on that common wire. Then I know how to do the led test.

[mk2cossie]

eurogranada before pulling any wiring apart, I'd be whipping out the spark plugs and checking their condition, and doing a compression test on all cylinders.

Its the easiest thing to do and takes the least amount of time

Plus, you can also check (or double check) all the plug leads are in the correct place

And I get where you are coming from with motivation, there's many things wrong on mine that are trying my patience at the mo. Sometimes the best thing is to switch off from it and have a different distraction 👍

[teaboy]

I'm sorry that I can't offer any advice but I am confident that, sooner or later, you will get to the bottom of it.

The post I'm most looking forward to is, 'The car is running like a dream and I'm out cruising'.

[eurogranada]

Jan 24, 2023 17:26:56 GMT mk2cossie said:

eurogranada before pulling any wiring apart, I'd be whipping out the spark plugs and checking their condition, and doing a compression test on all cylinders.

Its the easiest thing to do and takes the least amount of time

Plus, you can also check (or double check) all the plug leads are in the correct place

And I get where you are coming from with motivation, there's many things wrong on mine that are trying my patience at the mo. Sometimes the best thing is to switch off from it and have a different distraction 👍

Thanks! The compression and LED tests are the first I have lined up...

I even went as far yesterday as looking up my original engine/box loom and stripping that down a bit to trace the injector wiring. It was nice to be able to confirm I read the diagram right and pin 38 is a 12v feed to all injectors and they are individually switched to ground by the ECU. So now I know for sure how to do the led test behind the main connectors on the green loom. And if that checks out I know I'll have to repeat the test at the injectors themselves and should also make sure the right injector is fired at the right time. Although I'm not yet sure quite how to prove that... If the test doesn't check out at that point, I'll repeat the test on the wiring before the connectors. Depending on the results I should be able to deduce if the problem is in the green section or (god forbid as I'll never hear the end of it from a certain supporter on this here forum) in the one I created...

I've also looked into the spare connectors, but they are so far gone I'd have to do so much work to make something usable of that that I think the needle or pin through the insulation is the way to go forward.

Yeah, winter has never been my strong suit, at least not in latest years, but lately I've been feeling off. Enough to go and get checked over by the GP and running some tests. But what I need most is a nice sunny day. The sun makes the world a nicer place and makes for decent testing weather as well.

[eurogranada]

Jan 24, 2023 22:50:02 GMT teaboy said:

I'm sorry that I can't offer any advice but I am confident that, sooner or later, you will get to the bottom of it.

The post I'm most looking forward to is, 'The car is running like a dream and I'm out cruising'.

Thanks for the continued support and confidence in my abilities...

Last night I traced the injector wiring on the old loom and now I know how I will be proceeding (see post above) with the fault finding. One step at a time.

Oh, how I hope I'll be able to identify the fault, fix it and do my idiotic happy dance exclaiming she's alive, alive I tell ya!

[Alpina99]

Fully agree with Teaboy, looking forward to seeing that you have resolved the problem,
When you do, can we have a video of your dance ?? 😁😁😁😁
Nigel

[eurogranada]

Jan 25, 2023 9:10:38 GMT Alpina99 said:

When you do, can we have a video of your dance ?? 😁😁😁😁
Nigel

That would be a definite NO! 😁😁

[blackpopracing]

I'm not sure I'd bother about trying to find if thy fire at the right time, they probably are.
As long as they are firing you will get a mixture going into the engine & it will run ok.

[eurogranada]

So, I got myself pumped up far enough to make an effort on the Granada today after not being so succesful at that yesterday.

The game plan? Doing at least the compression test and the LED test for the injectors.

I decided however to first see if the ecu had thrown some codes. It had. P0155 HO2SHTR bank 2 sensor 1. Which I was pretty sure was caused by the one wire in the ecu plug that does not have the locking tab anymore coming off. Not too worried about that one. Next a P1401 High pressure difference in DPFE sensor circuit. A bit of googling led to the egr system and the exhaust pressure transducer. Couldn't really find anything wrong here.

As the comments were also stating this could be a ecu failure I grabbed my two spares. Turned out not to be very usefull though. For the one I have the full set of key, reader, pats box and ecu, but it has the older style pats and it didn't work on my wiring. The other is from teh same generation but a different ecu code. For this I have the ecu, key and reader but not the pats box. It is said the code is in the ecu, but I guess it's in the PATS box as the key didn't want to be recognised. Well no joy there. So back to the original ecu.

Next I ran the engine for a little bit to see if the spark plugs would be wet upon removal. Then I removed them for the compression test. Some were a curse word and for one I think it was actually cross threaded. But if it was it had never been a problem. The plugs were very black, but they didn't seem very wet. Number 3 seemed prettu dry really, but as the others weren't much different I can't be sure. I then asked my son for a little help to see if all sparkplugs actually had a spark. He could make the engine turn over while I held the leads and grounded the plugs one by one. Well as dirty as they were, they did all spark. Two strong ones, one (the rustiest) a little smaller. But at least spark was confirmed as well. Next I tested the compression and at least on 2 of the cylinders on the "cold" side I had almost equal compression. The third cylinder I just couldn't get the test lead to seat. On the other bank I had compression in the same strength on 2 of the 3 as again I couldn't get the lead to seat in one cylinder. And I didn't want to damage neither the threads nor the test lead. The lead was packed in the box in a u shape and this didn't make it easy to seat it on the deeply tucked away spark plugs. So with good numbers in equal range for 4 of the six I just considered compression not likely to be the issue.

I put it all back together after cleaning the plugs some, but maybe a new set would be better... The car seemed to run even worse, so maybe the plugs are past their best or my cleaning didn't do them too much good. So on with the LED test then.

I fashioned a lead from a new white LED, a resistor and some wire and a pin. Soldered it all together and looked up which wires were supposed to be the injectors. I didn't want to poke too many holes in the insulation so I didn't test them on the actual 12v feed as to me this wasn't suspect at this point in the loom as by the engine running I knew that at least some injectors were getting 12v from it. So I hooked the led to the battery plus terminal and poked the individual injector leads after the connectors with the pin. They all made the led blink rapidly. So at least the signals were getting through.

So with compression mostly confirmed, spark mostly confirmed (only on the suspect bank), and injector signal confirmed I felt I was nothing further as the car still ran like curse word.

I had previously decided I didn't want to take the top cover off as I trusted my work under it, but now I didn't know anything more to do than to go back to the coil pack and the firing order. And I guess I should have started with that, lol. Turns out there are numbers on the coil pack and there were numbers on 3 of the 6 leads..........................and two of those were not matching the number on the coil pack. I had switched lead 1 and 3. But I must admit with them the right way around, they were visually not routed as nicely. So the mistake was easy to make. But how I can have missed that working from pictures etc. is really beyond me....my only excuse is the lousy light situation when I was doing this in the garage.

Obviously I now wanted to know if this made any difference. Well it did!! Upon startup it was immediately clear from the ease of starting. And it was also clear from the throttle response which was now soooo much better. I put the car in reverse and headed for a run around the block (ok, after switching to drive, lol). The car was responsive, was fast even and would run pretty nicely. As encouraging as that was, I'm not convinced everything is a-ok. Idle is still a bit rough. Now as a note to all this, this was with the ecu maybe somewhat confused after having to run the engine with the ignition leads on wrong during its learning phase. So my next move would be to leave the battery off for an hour or so and see if that does some more. If not, I'm going to need some help on how to proceed. The only test I can now think of is pulling off the ignition leads one at a time to see when the engine note doesn't change when a lead is pulled as that would indicate that cylinder is the problem one.

The ecu is currently throwing a p158 code for the second hego sensor on the second bank. That will need to be investigated as well...

So progress of sorts!!

[thomfr]

Great result!

Simple tip if you are struggling with that u shaped lead. Run some hot tap water over it and it will become more flexible and you can straighten it easier.
Thom

[kevins]

Great result, the egr code could be an egr valve stuck open, leaking, or the evr vacuum valve leaking/wired/plumbed in wrong this would lead to a rough idle.

[eurogranada]

Jan 28, 2023 19:31:41 GMT thomfr said:

Great result!

Simple tip if you are struggling with that u shaped lead. Run some hot tap water over it and it will become more flexible and you can straighten it easier.
Thom

I did that, but there remained enough of a "memory" for the bend to be a problem. And as it was a borrowed tool I wouldn't want to risk damage. Anyway, the two teste cylinders on the suspect bank proved the point enough for it to be discounted as a cause.

[eurogranada]

Jan 28, 2023 20:47:28 GMT kevins said:

Great result, the egr code could be an egr valve stuck open, leaking, or the evr vacuum valve leaking/wired/plumbed in wrong this would lead to a rough idle.

Thanks, I still cannot believe I have made this mistake. But I did... But mostly I'm just glad it runs so much better now.

I now feel I can move on... Take out and clean the lower dash pan of all the oil. Start fitting the electrics for the other systems etc...


The EGR code has not come back as of yet. There is, however, a p0158 post cat lambda on bank 2 code present now. Which seems to be the consensus is a broken lambda. But before I try changing it (they have previously proven a curse word to get off). I'll reset the ecu by disconnecting the power and seeing if it comes back or not. If it does I'll have to check the wiring. Although I do remember having had to fix one wire on this particular sensor as it seemed to have gotten pinched and it was half way through. I suspect it had already happened on the donor as there's really nothing around that could have caused this. Maybe that fix (one of those insulated wire joiners) is throwing of the measurement if it's a signal wire? I do think I have spare lambda's so I should be able to switch it out. I do presume the system uses four of the same units and there's no difference between a pre- or post cat one.

[westbay]

Good news at last !

[therealpinto]

That´s a nice, easy fix and of course, if you mix up 1 and 3 you will have two cylinders (1 and 3...) firing out of sequence AND you can get issues in 5 and 4 too (since their "paired" plugs won´t necessarily fire in an open cylinder).

I am pretty sure new spark plugs will be the "final" thing that helps a lot.

Gustaf

[eurogranada]

Yesterday evening in a spare moment I unhooked the memory feed from the ecu for an hour or so by pulling the fuse before reinstating it and seeing how the engine ran. Unfortunately it didn't make much of a difference. It needed three attempts before it started and ran. From then on it starts, it runs, it responds to throttle ok-ish (just not as silky as before), but it is generally really lumpy. More so than last weekend when I had fixed the firing order.

Instead of a nice continuous vrrrrrrrrrr sound, its more of a vrump vrump vrump vrump. I have tried pulling the spark plug leads one by one to see if this tells me anything on cylinders not working, but it really didn't. No real change in running or responsiveness. Sound wise with an ignition lead pulled, a ticking sound develops on that cylinder, but this also happens on all cylinders. This engine is good at hiding it's faults as it will run even on half the number of cylinders!!

As I know I have spark, I still suspect the injectors even though I know they get their signals at the connector maybe there's a problem further down the line. I'm also contemplating air leaks on the intake system, but didn't have anything available to test this with and maybe a set of fresh(er) sparkplugs would make a difference.

So, how to proceed? I'm contemplating delving under the intake next...

[therealpinto]

Well, new spark plugs first...

Then, it is not on-common for injectors to gum up and get sticky when they have sat for a while. Unfortunately that is hard to diagnose without putting them in a test rig to see the spray pattern. Sometimes injector cleaner and tapping them (preferably as they are fired) will help but not always.

One more thing to remember, when you pull 1 spark plug on a waste-fire engine, you disable 2 cylinders (the ones sharing the coil). So it´s not always a very useful test...

Gustaf

[eurogranada]

Feb 1, 2023 11:41:34 GMT therealpinto said:

One more thing to remember, when you pull 1 spark plug on a waste-fire engine, you disable 2 cylinders (the ones sharing the coil). So it´s not always a very useful test...

Gustaf

I don't quite get that. The coil pack just fires a spark to two cylinders simultaneously. If I pull one lead from the spark plug, why would the coil not still fire the other spark(plug)?? It's not that you cut the feed to a coil, you pull the feed after the coil...