97 el fairmont dual fuel I haven't had it for long, about two thousand kilometers. If it was an old school type car I'd say it was retarded (like it's new owner). Except for the odd occasional surge of power in the early days, it has consistently backfired it's way into more and more gutless until it felt as powerful as a morris 1100. Then, one day while cruising through Port Augusta and changing over from petrol to gas, it did the best backfire yet (possibly inlet and exhaust) definitely inlet, started running rough and increasing revs. After getting past the ignorant cars in my way at the lights, I headed west on the highway and found it ran rough as guts on petrol and gas, more so on gas. I kept the fuel consumption meter on instead of using 11 litres per hundred it was using over 20. It was driving like it was overfueling. Gradually it seemed to get it's head around the petrol and by the time I'd done 120 kilometers it was using 12 per hundred and up a bit on power (170 pursuit like). It was still running crappy on gas when I got home so I parked it at the shed to look at when I got over the drama a bit.
Being very clever and having just got the info, I decided to give the base ignition timing an alteration to do away with the 'morris 1100 effect' at the same time as checking and repairing whatever the backfire did. So, I loosened the dizzy enough to turn it, went to start the car and no go. I've sat it for hours with battery dissconnected, done the ignition on for 60 minutes trick after that, no go. Checked everything, all connections, high and low tension set it up to start with TDC rotor on one etc no go. Put a timing light on the high tensions including coil no spark.
What next guys???

TFI on the dissy's prolly gone, they're very common for this.

Also check the MAP vacuum plug on the firewall, beside the washer bottle, these pipes blow off with a backfire and prolly the main cause of the rough running example of a english car.

the hose barb on the MAP could also have a crack in it now. check that.

But if its backfired, more than likely its blown one of the vac lines off

Thanks for taking the time for me..... TFI ? I'm a bit bushed. What does this gadget look like? I've done several very thorough checks of the vacuum pipes etc and they all seem good.

Thanks for that suggestion, I'll check the hose barb on the MAP this morning.

look at any vacuum line barbs on the intake manifold. my EB used to blow off this 1 same vacuum line everytime is backfired on gas.

the TFI module is the grey thing hanging off your dizzy

OK cheers, I'm happy to blame the TFI, I was wondering about it's innocence. Do they vary through the models? I've got an ea wreck that owns one (if they can be interchanged through the models)
I really appreciate the helpful input from you guys.

afaik yes they are interchangeable

beauty, thanks.