Festy lacks power uphill, then stalls. What up?

[Joe]

After many miles of trouble free driving, my '89 festy is now causing me some grief.

Here is what happening.... driving the same route each day, I've noticed a pattern developing with this stalling trouble. It may stall twice in one day, or not for seven days...very intermittent. What does remain constant, is that the engine will lack power going up a long gradual hill [1km] and the car slows down, without me lifting up on the accelerator. Eventually as I pull over the engine dies, however, it'll restart right away and I can drive off and continue to crest the hill with full power. Occasionally, I can manage to crest the hill with the engine power decreasing and when I'm over the top the power comes back with no more problems for the duration of the commute. It always seems to happen on the long hills when I'm going about 80kmh.

Data....
325000 kms on engine
auto trans
fuel injected
new timing belt, points, cap, condenser, plugs, fuel filter @ 298000kms
replaced the fuel pump and sending unit with a used @ 298000kms

Where to begin?
I've considerd that it may be the fuel pump, but what about vapor lock?
I know none /little about the emision stuff, computer stuff and how it may effect / cause this, can anyone offer up some advice here?

All of the vacume lines are tight and intact.
Can't think of anything else at the moment that would count or help with the diagnosis.

Thanks for the input,
Joe.

[DetroitDon]

Sounds like similar issues I had with my daughters 93 ATX Festiva. It would stall sitting at the light......then she overheated it and warped the head and blew the head gasket. I got a deal on a 97 Aspire head and installed it. The old head also had a couple burnt valves, so I believe it was leaking air into the intake manifold somewhere for awhile. I suspect the stalling problem now was due to a lean mixture. I would run a compression check first of all. Then check to make sure the timing is right on the money, both ignition and timing belt. Does it idle smooth or rough? Don't overlook the fact that the engine is relatively high mileage too. They last a long time and go lot's of miles given proper care....but they don't last forever. Hope that helps.....

You mentioned you changed the points and condenser? That don't sound right to me.......It's got to be over 25 years since I've seen a car with points and a condenser..... My Triumph TR3 has a points and condenser ignition set-up, but then again.....it's 44 years old!

By the way......the car has NEVER run so smooth or as nice as it does now with the Aspire head. I think the roller rocker set-up makes a big difference.

Don

[Joe]

DetroitDon,
You're right.........no points and condenser. Don't know why I mentioned that. It was the rotor and cap I changed.

Taking the compression readings is a good idea. I'll get a hold of a tester and do it. Could a burnt valve/s or a leaking head gasket cause "intermittent" power loss or would the power loss be there all of the time?

I know this engine won't last forever with the mileage. This car cost me only $500 and I've been using it as a cheap 2nd commuter. With the price of fuel costs [$.97 / liter] these days, the dodge 4x4 stays put.

Thanks,
Joe.

[DetroitDon]

Burnt valves would give the same problem all the time because it's a mechanical problem. A head gasket could be intermittent, but normally it's similar to burnt valves. Both problems would seem to go away with higher RPM, except for the loss of power. A compression check and the color of your plugs will tell a lot.......

Don

[Joe]

Well, I ended up taking the car to my neighbourhood garage for a diagnosis. What the mechanic found when he hooked the car up to a diagnostic computer was, too much resistance in the secondary ignition system. He found corrosion under the distributor cap and rotor, so he cleaned it off and eliminated that part of the problem. He also discovered that the engine fan was on all of the time when the engine ran, even when it was cold on start-up. He figured that this had something to do with the missing problem as it had something to do with the injection system switching over to a different mode / computer controlled system when the engine had warmed up. The engine would get somewhat warm with the fan on all of the time, but not enough for this system switch over to occur consistantly. Anyway, he installed hotter plugs to help with this and suggested that the cheapest fix would be to either get a used fan relay from the wreckers and change this myself, or to run a wire from the engine fan motor to a toggle switch and install it on the dash, so I could manually turn the engine fan on or off, thus allowing the engine to fully warm up. First, I got a used fan relay and installed it with no improvement. The fan was still on all of the time. Next I installed the on/ off switch to the fan motor and I can control it's operation.
Question: what's causing the fan to remain all of the time? Need I try another used fan relay? How can I test bench the two I now have?
Using the on /off switch to regulate the fan is a pain in the @ss.
Thanks.

[DetroitDon]

I had some similar problems with my daughters 93 ATX w/air. Does yours have air? If it does, take a GOOD look at the connection on the thermal switch on the thermostat housing,(mine looked good but the wire was broken with only the insulation keeping ever thing together) . If the connection is bad, the radiator fan will run all the time. When mine did this, I also thought it was a relay, or the thermal switch, (which are EXPENSIVE! so I troubleshot it some more)......troubleshot it all, and that's when I found the bad connection at the thermal switch. I ended up cutting the wire and connected it to the switch with a test lead. Now when the fan was running all the time, I didn't have any running problems, just took longer to come up to temperature. So I simply replaced the terminal with a 1/4" female wire end. I soldered mine, I just don't like crimped connections. This fixed the fan problem! I wouldn't clean a cap or rotor.....they are just too cheap to not simply replace them,(TIP OF THE DAY: Make sure you take note which way the rotor is pointing when you remove the cap.....they can go on 3 ways, only one is correct!). I would still make sure the timing is RIGHT ON THE MONEY, including valve timing by taking off the timing belt covers and making sure everything lines up exactly.

Good luck,

Don

[Joe]

Thanks for the input Don.

When the mechanic was telling me about the fan going all of the time and how the temp is important regarding the switching of fuel injection timing and such, he indicated that it was with these early fuel injection systems that had this trouble. The festy came with fuel injection first in 1989 i believe....the year of mine. He also said the later festy's did not use this early system and the operating temp became a non-issue as far as the fuel inj. system went.
I also queried him about the thermal switch, and if it could be the culprit. He said he didn't think so since by pulling off the lead to the thermal switch should make the fan turn off, once the engine was at operating temp and the fan was running. When he did it to my car, it did not make the fan quit as it should have, which led him to believe that it was the fan relay. I think I'll go to the wreckers and get a used thermal switch and see what happens.

I had replaced the timing belt @ 289000 kms, and the car ran fine till recently, so I don't think it's the timing of the valves.

I don't have a timing light, so I use the "ping" method of timing....you know..advance the timing till it pings then start backing off till it' no longer pings. Seems to work.

I had just changed the cap and rotor 27k ago, so they should still have lots of life left.....cleaning worked this time.

So far, I driven the car three times and no recurring stalling problems. So far so good. Now I'll work on the fan running issue.

[PaulLehr]

I will be working on the constant fan running problem on my 91GL I haven't even began to figure out what the problem is yet

[FB71]

c'mon guys. How many times do I need to post this?

check your temp senders. not the one for the gage, but the one for the ecu.

coolant temp is VERY important to fuel delivery, so that "mechanic" i read of above is wrong.

in FI cars, the ecu controls the fan through a relay. when the coolant gets warm enough, the ecu turns on the relay which turns on the fan. If the ecu can't read the temp sender, it turns on the fan as a precaution. If your fan is running constantly, then you have a temperature sender issue. If your 'mechanic' can't figure that out, then find another mechanic. This is basic failure stratagy that most FI cars have employed since the mid 1980's.