zyewdall Posted July 30, 2008 Share Posted July 30, 2008 On the highway today, going about 70ish, it kind of lost power going up a hill, and was really doggy the rest of the way back to the office. At idle it shakes a bit, but runs smooth at higher rpm. Seems (from pulling spark plug wires) that it's not using the front passenger cylinder. If you rev it, you can hear a little jingle from that side of the engine, and the exhaust has a rythmic pulsing wheezing noise to it at idle -- normally it's a very quite car (unlike most old subies I've had). So... my diagnosis, without actually tearing into it, is that the exhaust valve on that cylinder either lost a spring or a retainer or a rocker arm. What do you think? 1989 GL wagon, 244k original miles on the engine Z Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McDave Posted July 30, 2008 Share Posted July 30, 2008 Put a vacuum gauge on it. If there's a problem with the valvetrain or compression the needle will be bouncing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zyewdall Posted July 31, 2008 Author Share Posted July 31, 2008 So.... should I fix it... or put an EA81 in there (I have a good one sitting around). Keep the SPFI on there. Hmmmm. Or EJ22...... For now, I'm driving the Justy (which was actually MEANT to be a 3 cylinder engine) instead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthWet Posted August 1, 2008 Share Posted August 1, 2008 Speaking of spark plug wires, I have had more problems with bad running caused by sudden failures of spark plug wires or caps or rotors than anything else. Well, t-belts may top the list, but that is a personal demon. On my turbo cars, a wire might fail so that runs ok at idle, runs like poop from off-idle to 3g, go like gang-busters to 4-5g, than poop out again. Not a hard failure, just different sparkplug demands exceeded the wires ability. Speaking of spark plugs, did you pull the plugs and look at them??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zyewdall Posted August 1, 2008 Author Share Posted August 1, 2008 No, I haven't had a chance to tear into it yet. It's sitting in the parking lot at work, and it's been 100F the last few days.... I've got to get it back home to the mountains where it's cooler before tearing in. In the mean time, I'm coming up with all kinds of crazy ideas for the justy... brush guard and ATV winch on the front That seems like a good idea right now, but I'm going to run it by the sanity sensor tomorrow morning, when I haven't been working all afternoon in a 90+ degree office (shouldn't offices have air conditioning??) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zyewdall Posted August 7, 2008 Author Share Posted August 7, 2008 Well, I drove it home today -- handled the 4,000 foot elevation gain pretty well on three cylinders. A big sluggish, but not bad, and runs smooth still. Maybe tear into it next week and see what's wrong with it. Just turned over 244k on the way home Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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