N/A Mk2 - Engine dies after 30 seconds

[Iggy]

Hi everyone, I’ve been lurking on the forums since I picked up my Rev2 SW20 about 2 months ago.

And now she’s dead.

So, I’m in a bit of a predicament where my dream car and temporary daily driver is completely out of action, I’ve attempted a bunch of stuff as below to no joy, and so I turn to you wonderful people. She’s a UKDM N/A Rev2 sw20, registration K520JPW if anyone is interested.

I’m going to video what happens tomorrow when I have some more light and can upload this here.


The whole story –
Driving along to work, cruising in 5th at ~55 go to put my foot down to increase speed a little and… nothing. Engine dies.

Get her towed home by a friend and do some investigation, valve cover gasket is leaking oil and its dropped low, check in spark plug holes and there’s a little oil in them, check the plugs themselves and there’s oil beaded up on their tips.


Problem if tried to start now -
Engine fires nearly instantly, and runs perfectly smoothly for around 30 seconds, it then starts to shudder as if misfiring occasionally. This gets progressively worse until it completely dies.

If I try to start it straight away after, it’ll only run for 2-3 seconds then die, or not start at all, however If I leave it for an Hour or so it resets to stage one and goes for 30ish secs.

Touching the throttle only makes it die faster. No engine codes are thrown at all.


What I’ve done -
- Replace the Valve Cover gasket – the old one was in a terrible state and brittle like cheap plastic, no flex at all.
- Full Oil and filter change with new good quality 10w-40.
- Replaced all spark plugs.
- ECU Reset (I know this does very little on 2’s though)
- Tried with a different Battery (even though existing one is fairly new)


I have noticed that the ignition lead in cylinder 3 doesn’t quite “pop” as much into place as the others do, and comes off with little effort, so I may look to get this replaced, although I doubt this is causing these problems as above.

Maybe a timing issue? I Have a receipt for the belt 20k miles ago though, so I doubt that’s the culprit.

Any thoughts or advice would be kindly appreciated.

[almeida1234]

Any error codes?

[mr2magic]

Sounds to me like a fueling issue, especially considering it seems to be worse when applying throttle.
First step check codes. Second step check fuel filter. Third check whether fuel pump works and has enough pressure.

[pbmr2]

agreed sounds like a weak fuel pump.

I've got a used spare you can have for nothing.

Could also need a fuel filter service (change it)

The Circuit Opening relay can become faulty and cause similar symptoms.

Check for fault codes. however if you have reset the ecu and swapped battery then the codes will be clear until the engine is run for a bit.

[pbmr2]

If it's ignition then could just be old leads, dizzy cap and rotor and also split coil.

all can be inspected. check leads for resistance, check coil for cracks and good earthing (the mount is the earth to the chassis) check dizzy cap and rotor for wear. but these issues sound more like fuelling than ignition.

[Iggy]

Ive now checked teh fuel system, fuel pump is engaging fine, and the exhaust reeks of petrol when it starts dieing, so I dont think its a fueling issue (unless its overfueling and running really rich)

However, I thought the coil should be okay, as it had a little plastic guard around it to protect it form water.

...

Guess again, turns out it was cracked and corroded to hell and back.


Whipped the multimeter out to check the restistance as per the BGB, Secondary coil reading fine at 11.5kΩ

Primary coil is however reading very high at 1.8Ω (supposed to be between 0.4 and 0.5), so I think this could be the source of my issues. Will get one ordered from TCBparts and cross my fingers now.

[Iggy]

agreed sounds like a weak fuel pump.

I've got a used spare you can have for nothing.

Could also need a fuel filter service (change it)

The Circuit Opening relay can become faulty and cause similar symptoms.

Check for fault codes. however if you have reset the ecu and swapped battery then the codes will be clear until the engine is run for a bit.

Might take you up on that if this new coil doesn't help, snapped a photo but cant link URLs yet on the forum hehe.

I have a fuel filter on its way too, as its the only real service part I've not changed since owning the car, so it may be a potential culprit.

[Iggy]

So coil has now been replaced, and unfortunately the issue is still occuring.


I think I'm leaning towards it being a fuel issue now, I took the air filter off so it was getting as much oxygen as it could do. This caused it to not even fire at all, as opposed to fire infrequently as it was before, possibly meaning its leaning out.


I have a new fuel filter on the way, and I'm going to try grab a fuel pressure gauge to test the pump.

Hopefully its not the pump thats gone bad, but it seems that way at the moment.

[Migou]

hello, I have got a similar issue, last week my rev1 turbo was firing fine and died after few seconds, as if no fuel was given after starting it. So I bypassed the fuel pump relay by connecting fp and +b in the diagnostic box and it didn't die.

Have you tried that?

Also I have a question related, don't know if I should create another topic for that, I will if I am told to.

So having check that I took my car to the garage next to my company, saying that there was no error code, and that bypassing the relay, it started and didn't die, so I suspected the fuel pump relay to be faulty.
They changed it and it happened again this weekend. But I realised that the relay they changed was the Relay B4 90987-03001 056700-4670
I could not find much about this one but apparently it's fan related.

So I don't believe that a fan relay can cause the engine to die after few seconds. Am I mistaken on this one?

I don't think I'll go back to this garage (ignition motorsport in newbury for information)

[Iggy]

So I bypassed the fuel pump relay by connecting fp and +b in the diagnostic box and it didn't die.

Gave that a go, and I can hear the fuel pump churning away perfectly happily in the tank, however it still doesn't run.

Have traced it down to a fuel issue though, as it'll run perefectly happily on brake cleaner down the intake.

Removed the fuel filter, and the thing looks ancient, when I try to flow water through it it just sits in there aswell and nothing comes out, which is very promising.

Will swap this over when I get the new one delivered, and hopefully its just a clogged filter that was causing the problem. FIngers crossed running it for so long with a cruddy filter didnt cause any unhappy issues with the pump having to work overtime.

[Pauln]

I had a similar problem a few years ago with my rev2 n/a. It started off cutting out intermittently and wouldn't res start unless you left it for 5 -10 mins, but got progressively worse and started cutting out every time after a couple of mins.

Tried pretty much all the thing you have, including changing the coil, bypassing the pump relay, and changing the fuel filter, still the same.

In the end we found the ECU was turning off the injectors after a couple of mins, but couldn't really find out why.

The ECU appeared fine, no signs of burst capacitors or burnt components, but fitting a replacement ECU solved the problem. Weird, but if all else fails might be worth considering.

Paul

[Iggy]

Well, new fuel filter has sorted her right out and she's back on the road!

Cheers for the help everyone, I've learnt a lot along the way!

[mr2magic]

Well done that man!