Hi guys,

My GF Sarah just recently purchased an EB1 manual. Unfortunately it began life as a CFI car (and still was when purchased) and has 330,000kms on the clock (that said all the suspension and body are in surprisingly good nick).

Now the car has been surging under mild load since she got it and occasionally won't run properly just after starting up. I originally assumed plugs and leads so put on some gas (lower impedence) leads, and some autolite 985 plugs (gapped at 1mm) - this hasn't made the problem go away. Previous owners said a new dizzy was put in about a week prior to purchase so I assume this should be ok (but you know what they say about assumptions, going to try new cap and rotor button tomorrow!).

When plugs/leads didnt fix I ripped out the CFI fuel pump and replaced with an MPFI pump - still no fix. Tried putting in a new fuel filter, still no fix. Ripped off all the CFI , threw it in a pile and installed my known-good MPFI gear that used to be on my EA before the turbo stuff went on. (so, new injectors, wiring loom etc) - in the process found a kill switch had been wired into the CFI coil plug and thought hmm maybe this is the problem, but nope... Anyway, MPFI seems all ok, starts, runs, idles all good A/C etc still work (using an EA auto ECU but this worked fine in the EA for a long period of time!) - I've never needed to convert to MPFI dizzy to do the conversion either so didn't bother this time (and this ECU/manifold/loom combo have worked fine with a CFI dizzy in the past).

Anyway, the car seems like it has less go now than it did CFI (won't get to 100 in 2nd, which it did previously, reeeeallly struggles now) and still surges, seems really slow to pick up power almost like you're not using the throttle - in higher gears (3rd at say 70kmh) full throttle will actually slow the car instead of accellerating.

Ripped off the coil plug and lead, and E-seriesed (read: cable-tied) another coil to one of the manifold runners for testing - problem still exists!!

So i'm left with practically only the motor itself, dizzy, dizzy cap, and rotor button of the original gear - and the problem still exists.

Now, oil doesnt look milky so i'm hoping it's not a HG, could it be timing? I don't have a timing light nor (ashamedly) do I know how to check/change the timing properly - if so could it just be amazingly retarded, would this cause surging etc (just due to general lack of power etc, if it were say 20-30 degrees retarded; would it even run this far out??)

Any suggestions would be fantastic, starting to get to the end of my tether with this one (I assumed MPFI conversion would eliminate pretty much everything that could be wrong!!)

take it to a work shop a get the timing checked,,also put the proper distributor in,,and find a manual ecu..

timing was about 35 degrees retarded.

ECU and dizzy will be fine never caused issues in my EA (same ECU and dizzy)

I need to get another EA ECU tho as this one has a "BAD ROM/KAM" error which means it forgets the tune and reverts back to factory default every time the car is switched off.