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First outing, running on three cylinders. Solved.


anthonym

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just had first outing, removed old petrol, filled with fresh 98. Running badly, only three cylinders, not unusual but I never know what causes it; will clean the plugs, or maybe just replace them as I have several sets queuing to be used, bought each year and then not used. Hopefully it’s just “crud” in the engine that will be blown out with some use, it usually clears suddenly and “off we go” - my main consideration is whether to give it some beans to clean it out or not, it feels like that is what it wants. 

It never did this before Norway 2010, when a real downpour soaked everything and it ran on three cylinders for ages after that. Never been the same since in this regard.

anthony

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It may be worth checking your leads. You can do this with a multimeter and a ruler and a simple calculation to check resistance. Assuming your leads are different lengths.

i suggest this as one of my leads had a break in it. Heat would expand it so it manifested itself as a cylinder down at start up.

 

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It’s nothing to do with all the work over Winter, she always does this. 

Yes idles fine, better in fact.

I do suspect plug leads; so I will change to that new set except the coil lead which doesn’t fit, no not done anything about that, forgot. 

Stridey tell me more? I would love to identify the culprit.

thanks everyone.

anthony

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Which one ? The photo above looks pretty corroded. Need to abrade in connectors of distributor cap too ... unless you have a spare. The leads were in a bag on a shelf on right hand wall as you face into to garage
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Plenty of YouTube vids about checking leads.

you need to measure resistance, and simple maths with the lengths. You can then see if a wire is out of spec, 

I found it satisfying to identify my prob, of course yours may be different.

My system was a bit custom, as I had electronic ignition, luckily a kind chap at my local motor factors worked out a Ford Fiesta set up would work by looking at the plugs on both ends. I then got a custom set made up by formula power : http://www.formulapower.com/ for about £40. Quality items without paying for a brand name, (Magnacore and the like) and made with the right angle plugs I wanted. I then put the longest one from the Fiesta set (£9) in my boot as a spare, figuring should I ever need a set on a trip (unlikely) I could replace one, or get a whole set from a Ford dealer.

Good luck!

 

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right then, the dizzy is right goosed. The central sprung connect fell off in my hand as I removed the cap. All the surfaces are very corroded. The rotor arm likewise. Time to go shopping, fingers crossed.

and yes I have remembered the "coil" lead. 

thanks again for the pointers, just the ticket.

anthony

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I know you need plugs with the built in resistors on wasted spark engines but I'm not sure why; possibly because the plug leads are a lot shorter and therefore lower resistance, but that would only apply to the EU3 coil-on-plug wasted spark setup (the EU2 VVC also ran wasted spark but still had long leads, I don't know whether that also needed resistive plugs). I also know that if you use non-resistor plugs on an EU3 coil-on-plug engine it misfires terribly. If you already have long resistive leads and you're not wasted spark I don't think you absolutely need plugs with built in resistors but I have no idea whether there's any harm in it; probably not as I've seen another EU2 engine running BCPR7ES recently. I'm hoping somebody who does know will tell us.
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Wanted spark is a different way of wiring up the ignition; rather than one coil and a distributor to switch the spark pulses out to each cylinder you have separate coils for the cylinders and no distributor - well actually you only need one coil for each pair of cylinders. The two cylinders in each pair (1&4, 2&3) are exactly half a cycle apart, so when one is nearing the end of the compression stroke and ready to fire, the other is nearing the end of the exhaust stroke and so sparking it will do nothing at all. So it's quite OK to fire both cylinders in each pair each time and one of the sparks just gets wasted. Your engine is not wasted spark and it has a distributor instead. The EU3 engines were wasted spark and had two coil packs on top of two of the plugs with very short plug leads to the other two plugs, placing each pair in series. The EU2 VVC also ran wasted spark because there was no way to fit a distributor as the VVC engine has pulleys on the rear ends of the cams, but in this case it had dual coil packs down on the side of the block and long HT leads up to the plugs as usual. You could probably program the Emerald to run wasted spark but it would need wiring changes, different coil packs and a different cam cover if you went for the EU3 style (the alternative being to rub the EU2 VVC coil packs).
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