Hail, Lucas -- Prince of Darkness
BTW - I don't have the foggiest idea what's wrong with the Saturn! 8<{)
John
Larry Steckel wrote:
> Here is one for you Saturn enthusiasts,
>
> My daughter dropped off her 1995 SL-1 (1.9 litre, single cam,
> automatic, almost 140,000 miles) saying that it just wasn't running right.
>
> I pulled one spark plug and could see why. There wasn't much electrode
> left.
>
> So I threw in a bottle of gas treatment, bought new plugs, new wires, a
> new air cleaner and a new fuel filter and spent the afternoon screwing
> everything in place. God I love Saturn fuel fiters. I hope I get to
> meet the engineer who designed that abortion before I die, so I can
> choke him proper!
>
> Sitting in the driveway, the thing would rev smoothly to 4,000 RPM and
> then fall on its face like the engine was hitting a soft rev limiter. It
> also started spewing large clouds of smoke out the tail pipe. I checked
> and #3 plug was black, like it was in a very rich condition.
>
> I did a compression test and everything was OK. All cylinders within 10
> lbs of each other. So that would rule out a bad valve. I checked the
> computer for codes, and there were none stored.
>
> I thought one of the new plugs or wires could be bad, so I swapped in
> old ones. No change.
>
> I decided to actually drive the car before I went further and ripped
> into more things. Out on the road, floor the gas and the car will rev
> right up to 5,000 RPM, shift and continue to pull without a hitch.
> Driveability is fine. And...after flogging it for awhile the smoke went
> away, although in neutral it still hammers against a stop at 4,000 RPM's.
>
> Does anybody have any ideas what is going on here? An injector maybe?
> One of the coil packs going duff? A case of the vapors in the
> computer? I'm afraid I'm into the black arts now.
>
> I think I'd much rather fool with SU carbs and Lucas distributors.
>
> Larry Steckel
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