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Vauxhall Carlton problems starting...

Hi

I recently bought a 1993 Vauxhall Carlton 2 litre 8 valve at auction and it started and drove very well. Then one weekend, i left the car running and after about 10 minutes of idling, i noticed it starting to idle very rough. The car would shake and revs would drop then go upto

2k revs before coming down again. This would continue along with a distinct smell of rotten eggs (excess unburnt fuel?).

I thought nothing of it at the time and it sat in my driveway for a week. On trying to start the car the next week, it turned over and over

and did not fire up. I did it until the battery went dead. On connecting jump leads i managed to get the car started after about 5 minutes of turning over and pumping the accelerator. Eventually it did catch.

When started it misfires badly, occasionally stalls. Taking it for a drive, sometimes there is no power (foot to the floor - car struggling under 2k revs), sometimes there is full power.

If i turn ignition off and start again when hot, it has trouble starting again and it will turn and turn until eventually catching.

Help! It was running fine a couple of weeks ago!

Having read previous threads, am i correct in thinking it could be the ignition system which is at fault - HT leads, distributor, plugs etc or

could it be a sensor of some sort?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Steve

Reply to
Stevo
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Bad idling one would normally say it's the idle control valve but poor running yes it could be anything. It could be the crank or cam sensors if there are any.

Reply to
adder1969

Could be a number of things. On one of the many 2L Carltons I had (in fact it was the first one), I replaced the plugs, leads, dizzy cap, rotor arm, king lead, even coil. I even took the coil back thinking it was faulty. In the end it got to the point of refusing to start at all, and I checked the crankshaft sensor, which was black (caked in some sort of carbon deposits), cleaned it up to a nice shiny metal colour with some medium-ish grade abrasive paper, and it fired up straight away. So try that first - it's free!

You'll find the crank sensor to the left of the engine as you look at it from standing in front of the car - it's got a thick-ish wire coming out of it and there's a small 10mm-headed bolt holding it in.

Reply to
AstraVanMan

I'll give it a try thanks.

Could it be a faulty lambda sensor? That would explain the rotten egg smell.

Steve

AstraVanMan wrote:

Reply to
Stevo

No.

Reply to
Tim..

The rotten egg smell's the fuel.

Reply to
Duncan Wood

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