Sensors - Some basic information

[1990new]

We get a lot of posts on the forum relating to no start, idle problems and bad engine running in general.
Many times these problem are directly caused by failing or failed sensors which feed info to the ECM
which uses the feedback info to control the running of the engine or to control actuators which are triggered by the ECM.
On rare occasions, the failure is the ECM itself.

Here is a link that has some good general information about sensors and ECM's. It's on the Honda Accord forum but it has some
pretty good info on sensors in general and there are also descriptions of failure symptoms and other general info.

http://www.3geez.com/forum/technical/71750-sensors-their-basic-failure-symptoms.html

The post is well written and pretty easy to understand. Just reading through it might turn on
a light for someone who is trying to solve a problem with their Festiva engine.

[TominMO]

Excellent contribution! Should be stickied!

[Movin]

This should be followed up with pattern failures . Such as Cooling fan runs with key on car does not start=ignition switch. Cooling fan runs all the time but car runs..and maybe poor mpg's= bad coolant temp switch or connector. This is just for our cars, by definition a pattern failure.

[1990new]

Excellent contribution! Should be stickied!

This should be followed up with pattern failures . Such as Cooling fan runs with key on car does not start=ignition switch. Cooling fan runs all the time but car runs..and maybe poor mpg's= bad coolant temp switch or connector. This is just for our cars, by definition a pattern failure.

I totally agree. That would be nice. (Long post I know but I hope our Festiva expert members will take time to read it.)

To create such a document (or series of documents) would be a huge job that would take a lot of time and collaboration between our most experienced members. I've been thinking about it, looking through my Festiva Service Manual (FSM) and doing google searches.

The Diagnosis and Testing sections and the Symptom Charts in the FSM are good references. The trouble is, most new Festive owners who come here looking for help have never even seen one.

The same questions are asked in threads over and over by new members and answered over and over by the core experienced members (but then I guess we will be getting fewer and fewer new members as time goes by). There are tons of brand specific and generic automotive troubleshooting and repair help sites
on the internet. Most brand specific sites (such as our own fordfestiva.com) are organized the same way and have no easy way to organize or navigate to
a core depository of Troubleshooting, Diagnostic, and How To documents.

When new members come on the site and ask these same question which could easily be found in such documents (if they existed and had a button link to them in the banner), many of our more experienced member who are tired of answering the same questions over and over, just tell them that the subject has been covered in an old thread and refer them to the search box. But when they search for a specific subject they get tons of threads with good information, mixed with opinions and other topics which have nothing to do with their problem.

There's no problem with that...this is a social network too and most of us like it the way it is. But many of these folks are just looking for quick answers and have neither the time nor inclination to socialize. And you could say "the heck with them", we're not here for their convenience. But wouldn't it be nice to have a link to a place that would carry them to a page here or to another site that had permanently stored, intelligently written, general and troubleshooting articles and references (created by our fellow forum experts) that would answer these questions? I think it would make a very favorable impression on them and hopefully help them to soon become knowledgeable contributing members of the forum as they learn more about the fantastic Festivas.

I believe the hosts of our forum have done enough for us already and we should not expect them to customize the forum to enable a project like this (unless they would like to volunteer of course).
However it would be easy to set up a blog to store these articles.

To get a project like this off the ground we need:
1. Someone to set up a blog to house the information.
2. Organize the blog to have
a. a sandbox area where contributing members could post articles (and occasionally pictures or diagrams) for initial storage and editing.
b. a comment area where all forum members could access the articles and suggest corrections or enhancements (but not modify).
c. a published article area where articles could be published when ready for publication and searched but not edited.
3. And most importantly, experienced forum members willing to create the articles.

As an example, Someone who is very knowledgeable about the specifics of Festiva sensors, actuators, and the ECM could use the article in the
link I referenced and their expert knowledge and information from the FSM to create an article which would be Festiva specific (with variations in regards the carb, manual and auto trans, a/c etc.).

I know there must already be lot of information in the forum that could be mined to create similar articles.

Any volunteers?

[WmWatt]

Get a copy of the Haynes emissions control manual from the public library. Interesting reading.
Also covered in automotive engineering texts which I've had from the public library too.

[1990new]

Get a copy of the Haynes emissions control manual from the public library. Interesting reading.
Also covered in automotive engineering texts which I've had from the public library too.

Another example of how multiple minds do better work. And I see you are the original owner of a Festiva like I am (my 1990 Surf Blue..over 325,000 miles).

Yes...the library is another great place to find reference materials that would be very helpful to the writer of a Festiva/Aspire specific article.

Saw you picture series on the do-it-yourself front bearing wheel bearing replacement. Good job! I'll bet you could write a great article on that subject.

Of course there are lots of opinions expressed about the best way to do things (in addition to the book way) and anyone who wrote the base article on a subject must be aware of the fact that their article would be open to the forum for review and critique. Adding other peoples experiences in the real world will serve to improve the article, for example, by including information about what could happen if you forget a crucial step in a repair procedure.

I would not expect these articles to be just a bunch of wrote facts and step by step how to's. While this information should be included, the article should be easy to read and understand and also have some entertaining elements. We've all made mistakes when trying to fix something. The more mistakes made by other and noted in the article, the better it will be. For example how many people have broken the thermostat housing the first time they replaced a thermostat?
The manuals says nothing about the fact that this can happen and how to prevent it. Would someone like to write an article on thermostat replacement?


The subject of this thread is becoming "Festiva General Help Reference". Can the thread title be edited and changed to that?
May not matter...if not enough interest is show, it will just die anyway.

I know it's a lot of work to do something like this... maybe too much to expect.

Volunteers??

[Movin]

This guy rewrote the haynes in his own words with the above idea's and it turned out pretty good! I guess that would be the goal? I am sure Karl could comment on the fun reading in this result . Course it is for a VW we still need one!!

[/URL]

[1990new]

A friend up the street just bought an old VW camper van last year and he's been asking me about helping him get it back in shape. Back in the day, I owned three VW vans, A 1970, a 1974 and a 1978. They were great. Also owned a 72 Super Beetle, a 73 412 sedan and a 74 Rabbit (the Rabbit was a mistake).
I'm going to let him know about this book.. Thanks.

Yep who knows if we do it right, an effort like this could turn into a book somewhere down the road. The craigslist add that I just posted would definitely need to be included in it (with the authors permission of course).

No volunteers yet to start a blog to publish the articles to. If no one steps up, I guess I could start studying up and learn enough to organize one.

We need people to volunteer to write articles though. From reading the forum, I know there's a whole lot of Festiva knowledge here.

Some article titles come to mind "Suspension System Basics", "Suspension System Modification". "B3 Engine Basics",
"All about Wheel Bearings", "When Relays Fail", "The Clutch", "The Ignition System (separate ones for carb and efi", "Available Options", "All About Wheels and Tires". I can see some of these turning into chapters with separate article as the contributions multiply.

Maybe I'm dreaming but I don't know of any other place where there is more practical knowledge about Festivas that on this forum.
I must admit that I can't imagine a project like this turning into a book like the Volkswagen one mentioned here. The
potential audience is too small. But who knows, if we throw in enough entertaining stories the audience could become
large enough. Even if we just get a bunch of article written and build on them, it will be worth it to the ff.com members,
current and future.

Ok...Who will be first to write an article? Lots of you have already written one.. it's just spaced out among multiple thread here.

[Movin]

I think the real audience would be slightly larger than the toy car thing some of us signed up for. Increasing the scope to include newer foreign cars would help but the project size would be boggling!

If we mined the site for a topic past and present, sorted the data then posted the topic eventually the project could be completed. The project would need a committee and it would need admin's involvement to final proof and sticky in our own online manual. That is asking a lot from those who frequent here, but the way wiki collects info and proofs could be successful.

[1990new]

I think the real audience would be slightly larger than the toy car thing some of us signed up for. Increasing the scope to include newer foreign cars would help but the project size would be boggling!

If we mined the site for a topic past and present, sorted the data then posted the topic eventually the project could be completed. The project would need a committee and it would need admin's involvement to final proof and sticky in our own online manual. That is asking a lot from those who frequent here, but the way wiki collects info and proofs could be successful.

Sound like you know more about this stuff than I do...hope so, I'm still learning.
FestyBoy has given me permission to post his article about Wheel Bearing Replacement with hand tools. This is an example of what I envision.
The template is generic google and is crude but it is readable. He said that I could also post his Timing Belt / Water Pump Replacement article.

How do you mean admin involvement? Are you saying we should get a new forum topic set up that would link to the blog and ask for volunteers
to administer the topic? Sound like a good idea. And also volunteers to act as a committee to approve the final drafts for publishing?

Don't know about wiki info and proofs? Is that a free public domain tool?

A private blog could also be set up that is accessible to only members of the committee for editing and to everyone else for viewing and commenting.

More Ideas? More Volunteers?

[Bert]

I have to admit to liking the concept of having a step by step "dichotomous key" (always a yes/no progression) available for diagnosing Festy faults. I have had very good diagnostic advice over the past 3 years thanks to forum members but it would be so much easier if the search feature already offered step by step solutions in advance of despairingly starting another repair thread.
My dizzie pickup suddenly failed last year and I was at wit's end trying to figure that one out because logic from the 60s (ie rectify no spark while the engine is turning) did not directly apply in this case. I'm lucky in that I have spares of just about everything and can swap-out things on a trial basis but most folks are not in that position.

[1990new]

I have to admit to liking the concept of having a step by step "dichotomous key" (always a yes/no progression) available for diagnosing Festy faults. I have had very good diagnostic advice over the past 3 years thanks to forum members but it would be so much easier if the search feature already offered step by step solutions in advance of despairingly starting another repair thread.
My dizzie pickup suddenly failed last year and I was at wit's end trying to figure that one out because logic from the 60s (ie rectify no spark while the engine is turning) did not directly apply in this case. I'm lucky in that I have spares of just about everything and can swap-out things on a trial basis but most folks are not in that position.

You're talking about a huge programming effort to set up something like that Bert. I suspect that some of the auto dealer maintenance departments have such programs available to them, but I'm sure they are not in the public domain and even if they were available, if would be a big job to customize them to handle our Festivas.
I'll be happy if we can just get some easily understood articles with list of real world diagnostic and troubleshooting steps in them.
And some general article about how thing are supposed to work together and what happens when they are not playing well together.

[TominMO]

^^ Oooohh yes please, do that!

Maybe one sticky called "Diagnostics" in the Repair Help forum.

[Movin]

Flow Charts ? The Haynes does not have these? Either way back then most tests involved a volt-temp graph for instance that was used to confirm your suspensions.