engine misses in heavy rains, etc.

[bobstad]

My car is a '91 Festiva L 5-speed which every time I drive in very heavy rains begins to misfire badly so that for instance if I'm on the freeway though I don't lose speed if I floor the accelerator I can't accelerate, and slow down on hills. And the next day the car is harder to start so that I've taken off a new distributor cap with new rotor, both with copper contacts and quality units; to find corrosion on the contacts on both cap and rotor I cleaned which made the car start and run normally again.

I'm planning to try using a silicone gasket making compound in a tube on the distributor cap, its gasket and the distributor to see if this will help.

I wonder if anyone else has had this problem and if so what they think the causes are, whether or not there is a good permenent solution and/or if my idea seems worthwhile? I live in an area with torential rains and often travel where there are as bad or worse so this is very important.(a few weeks ago I had this problem between Berkeley and Sebastapol early in the evening and on the next morning's news saw there was 2.6 inches of rain there that night!)

One other problem even worse which may or may not be related is that in December of 2001 I was driving through a flooded roadway many other cars and trucks were successfully crossing, when my car suddenly stopped without any notice or dramatic effects while I'd been going almost less than a walking pace.(a Ford that won't ford?)

Thinking something electronic was affected until after an attempt at jump starting failed, I'd been towed to a shop and found out one of my connecting rods was bent by water that had gotten through the air-cleaner.

I was nearly broke and ended up selling my car as a parts car for a dollar to a young guy I'd noticed on the street driving another Festiva with the tiny spare on the left rear who looked poor and needy. Through his kindness and my luck I was able to buy my car back nine months later for $700 after he'd successfully replaced the bent rod.

[Bowls]

the woman i bought my 92 festiva L 5spd Man. from, told me when it rains hard the engine can make weird noises like sputtering or something, and she would pull over for 5 minutes let the car sit, and it would be back to normal. Maybe we have a similar problem?

I have to admit, i have not driven the car in the rain yet, so i do not know if the problem is still occuring, or what exactly it sounds like. ill go drive it around the next time it rains, see if i can re-produce the noise and record it.

[bobstad]

missing in very heavy rains...

I worry that while driving at speed I might bend another con-rod, but more likely the problem seems that water is getting into the distributor, though now that I think of it that did seem dry even with the corrosion on the relatively new rotor and contacts.(which might be an internal problem of the engine's, which has 140,000 miles now...that could be serious I think!)

[elcamino1]

Did you change the spark plug wires,probably the cause of your problem.

[bobstad]

I'd been planning on changing the plug wires, but they were installed just about 55,000 miles ago and are a premium set so not overly old. And, I've been getting excellent gas mileage and performance.(a set of plugs just as old as the wires I replaced about 5,000 miles ago looked decent enough to keep running, but I didn't)

I'll do that though and see what happens, though the problem with the heavy rains and missing doesn't seem likely to be affected is one theory I'll hold to since I don't know any better. Very nice to be wrong, however!

[F3BZ]

there is a sqaure shouldered o-ring gasket between the cap and the dist housing that might be missing or deteriorated. also i've had good results by buying a tube of dielectric grease and running a thin bead just inside the boots on both ends of all the plug/coil wires.

[elcamino1]

With engine running take a spray bottle of water and spray the coil and see what happens.

[mattswabb]

Wires, rotor and cap. One of those is your problem affected by the moisture. Back when funds were tighter I'd just spray the wires and cap with wd40 and the problem would go away for a bit.

While I was in vegas over xmas my daughters car wouldn't start when the weather was wet. I had her spray down the wires and it started right up.

[rotinaj13]

pop the hood with it running when the problem is happening and see if you can see little sparks of electricity from the wires. like matt said spray the thing down with wd40 one thing at a time till it acts all right and that should tell you what the problem is.

[bobstad]

Thanks for all the tips, though you should see the way its rains to get this to happen. I did look at Festiva Motor Sport dot com and see the gasket between the distributor and rotor cap sells for only three bucks, but mine seems decent enough at first glance at least.(I need glasses for reading, but rarely wear them otherwise so my first impressions are sometimes unreliable though the thing did seem just about perfect and which I'd never seen on a distributor before)

I have plenty of cans of WD-40 type stuff and will carry them into the storms...any wiring sparks should be easy to see as dark as the sky gets even in mid day under these conditions.(I'll also throw in my army surplus East German rain poncho and plenty of towels, etc.) And new plug wires in two days at the first of the month for sure!

Thanks everyone for your responses.(this is sure a great resource, and such a contrast from those days of darkness with a VW and only THE IDIOT'S GUIDE, Haynes, etcetera to rely on...for four engine rebuilds etcetera, and one historic tranny swap working at night by myself while homeless, with a kerosene lantern and a flashlight in my mouth in a parking lot in Olympia, WA when over 100 degrees farenhiet during the day...YUCK!)

[Damkid]

my car used to do that as well, after i changed the distributer cap it went away

by the way the seal did look fine to me but it was still leakin

[rotinaj13]

Yeah it could be a small crack in the cap, breaks in the seal. try the wd40 chances are you will find the problem if not we will help u further.