Hello All.

Have a problem with my EF. When the car is at running temp, it sometimes idles as if you have pulled off 1 of the spark plug leads, so it’s dropped a cylinder. It only use to do this when the car was idling.
Today it has started to have the same problem when driving at say 80k's.

In the last 3 months the car has had; a new fuel pump, 2 fuel filters, I swapped over the spark plug leads, checked and cleaned the spark plugs. The injectors were removed and cleaned last October. The engine has done just on 270,000 k's, with only a head gasket done to it.

Does anyone have any idea's?

cheers
coops

Hi mate.

The sympton you are describing , would most probably be the following.
First pull one lead of at a time from the spark plugs so as to isolate the cylinder.
Be carefull though as high voltage is present.
Ones you determine the cylinder that is dropping out then proceed with the following.
If there is no spark in one cylinder, remove the spark plug and check that it was firing, usually a non firing plug will be covered in black carbon.
From here all you can do is change the plug and possibly the lead.
If that doesnt fix it, then check too see if the injector is pulsing, or alternatively do a ohms check, the continuity should be in the ball park figure of 9 to 18 ohms.
If that checks okay, then you most probably have a head gasket thats gone bad, between to cylinders or the coolant system is being pressurized.

to check for a pressurized coolant system all you need to do is screw the radiator cap one nothch so as to relieve the system . Whilst you do this start and check to see if your idle speed has stabilized.
If it has then you are assured by replacing the head gasket that you will fix the problem.
After all this has been performed and you still havent found the problem, then it would be safe to say that you either have a sticky valve or a burned valve.

Thanks for your reply.
I'll run the tests and see what i come up with.

cheers
coops