'87 Turbo Won't Idle

[USAndretti42]

Someone I know in Los Angeles has an '87 Turbo with K Jetronic injection (it's a USA model). It was running fine but recently it has started stalling instead of idling. Nearly every time you lift off and dip the clutch to come to rest the engine dies. You can catch it with the throttle. Sometimes it will idle but at about 1500 rpm. It's the same hot or cold.

The owner is not technically minded so I am going to have a look at it for him.

It is actually a G-car but I think more Stevens cars were fitted with this injection than Giugiaro cars so I though there would be a bigger pool of expertise in this area here than in the Giugiaro Technical Section.

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[Artie]

Someone I know in Los Angeles has an '87 Turbo with K Jetronic injection (it's a USA model). It was running fine but recently it has started stalling instead of idling. Nearly every time you lift off and dip the clutch to come to rest the engine dies. You can catch it with the throttle. Sometimes it will idle but at about 1500 rpm. It's the same hot or cold.

The owner is not technically minded so I am going to have a look at it for him.

It is actually a G-car but I think more Stevens cars were fitted with this injection than Giugiaro cars so I though there would be a bigger pool of expertise in this area here than in the Giugiaro Technical Section.

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks in advance.

I don't know anything about the Bosch injection, but is there a idle air control valve fitted to these cars? I had an older Eclipse(mitsubishi) and it would do the same thing, ran fine but wouldn't idle. This valve went bad.

Artie

[t70]

Sorry it took me so long to respond to this. There are a few factors that can be causing this problem. The first is that the fuel distributor may be gummed up and not functioning properly. The second is the warm-up regulator and then there's the fuel filter.... if the suction filter is glogged you'll have a problem idling. Fourth is the main filter and that's about all I can think of off the top of my head... You really need a fuel pressure guage to see what's going on. However, if you do just want to tackle something... you could rebuilt the warm up regulator... and here's the instructions on that:

http://www.landsharkoz.com/images/pdf/wurfix.pdf

Oh yeah.. one last thing... there's a cold start injector as well... check the power at that to see if it's working as well... The system also has a temperature switch as well.. it's an on/off temp sensor that activates, as i recall, both the warm up regulator and the cold-start injector.

Edited July 9, 2007 by Mark T-C

[USAndretti42]

Thanks for the info, Otis.

The car is now in my garage and I was looking at it tonight. Coming in and looking at the link you posted I see that there should be a vacuum pipe to the top of the warm-up regulator. I found a U-shaped piece of plastic hose lying on the engine near the extra-air valve but no vacuum pipe to the warm-up regulator. Should there be one and, if so, where does it connect to? And what colour pipe connects to it (to help me find the right pipe on the car).

[USAndretti42]

Found the problem.

Climbed into the trunk to see if there was a pipe that should connect to the warm-up regulator vent. Couldn't find one and decided the u-pipe was to stop stuff falling into the vent. While I was in there I noticed the pipe to the turbo inlet was brittle and spilt. Enough air was leaking into the pipe that the air flow meter did not register the engine was running except when the pipe moved enough to close up the split a bit and then it would race because the throttle stop had been wound in so much.

Cut the end off and fitted the remainder onto the turbo. Ticks over now.

Thanks for your help, Artie and Otis.

[t70]

right on! Wonderful it was such an easy fix!