Michael's 180B Sedan Z18ET

[Mikewazowski]

Aargh! Broke down on the way to work today,...very frustrating!
I came around a corner and was just heading up a slight incline and the engine lost revs and died. I could still hear the fuel pump pumping and the dash lights were on but the engine was dead. I rolled back down the incline out of the way of traffic and then started it up again (after a few tires/waiting a while) started to accelerate to get up the "hill" and then it died again. I rolled back and tried to start/waited a while again. I think it started a third time, but then when I revved it, it died again (before I even took off. Now it won't start. It will turn over and I can hear the fuel pump running but it won't fire.

I'm wondering if it might be heat-related, as I do 10 - 15 min of open road driving followed by a 5 min drive through town to get to work. Both times it has broken down about 1 min from work (I guess when it would be at its hottest). When it is running, it runs fine, so I'm thinking that maybe:

- Something is cutting power to the coil (ecu, ignition,etc) I've checked the connections on the coils and tightened them up.
- Something is cutting power to the injectors (ecu, ignition, etc)
- I'm not getting sufficient fuel pressure? Although the pump sounds like it's running normally and I can't see any leaks.

I'm open to suggestions/things to test. I'm hoping that it still won't start when I get home tonight so I can check a few things.

[Mikewazowski]

Ok so Dad just started it up and drove it all the way back home with not problems. I'm guessing that because it had cooled down it ran fine? Hmmm.....

[Mikewazowski]

Talked to the auto-sparkies and they said it sounds like coil breaking down, or maybe ignition module inside the dizzy. Will check these out.

[Flauski]

Are these electronic or points ignition? I had a similar issue with my 1200 work ute, it turned out to be the the tiny cylindrical noise supressing capacitor on the side of the dizzy! It was replaced and rad sweet again.

[Mikewazowski]

They are electronic ignition. Is there any way to test the little capacitors?

[z18et1200coupe]

if it does happen to be your distributor or something like that i have a few of them spare so i could lend you one or whatever!

[Mikewazowski]

if it does happen to be your distributor or something like that i have a few of them spare so i could lend you one or whatever!

Awesome! Cheers for that dude. I'll be in touch if I need anything.

[Bartman]

A hot fault like that does sound coil ish. Check your balast resistors too. IF the coil gets full votage, it'll get the stitch once it warms up. Although it will usually run like shit for a bit first.

[85_Z31]

If it is the Coil Ignitor and you can't find another nissan one JayCar Makes a Coil Ignitor kit which can be configured multiple diffierent ways.

Its about $50 and is pretty easy to make.

I got the kit and built it all up and that's what I'm running on my v6, solved one of my misfire/ignition problems

[Mikewazowski]

Well this evening I took the coils out and tried to test them. I tested the resistance across the +ve and -ve terminals (primary winding) and +ve and spark plug lead output (secondary winding).
Got the same reading on both coils for primary, but found it really difficult to get a reading for the secondary on the inlet coil. Both coils had quite a bit of surface rust inside the spark plug lead terminal (not sure what the proper name for this is). I cleaned, sanded, and crc'd these. Then put the coils back in, but swapped inlet and exhaust coils.

I went for a ~20 min drive and it ran fine. I'll take it to work tomorrow and see if I make it. I'm hoping that it was just the inlet coil and that the problem is solved, but only time will tell.

Btw Bart, I don't think my coils have balast resistors, at least not that I'm aware of. Pretty sure I took mine out when the Z18ET was wired up.