Hello all, once again...
The car itself is a 1988 Reliant LE wagon, 2.5L engine with the three speed automatic. It ran a lot better when I put a good battery in it. The "check engine" light works, but it is not on right now. Codes in the computer are
12 and 55, which seem to indicate a "normal" state. With the old bad battery in place, the light would come on in seconds after startup. I never took any chance to get the codes at that time.It was running with a miss, so I took a look at plugs, plug wires, distributor cap and rotor. The plugs looked OK, and the cap was probably passable. But the wires and the rotor were *nasty*. I was surprised that it even ran given the condition of the rotor by itself. So I replaced them with new ones, and thought that would be it. The car should surely be very happy.
Well, it is not happy. I'd say it's somewhat less happy than it was with the icky wires and rotor. It will start right up and run fine for a short period of time. Then I start to notice slight missing, which gradually gets worse until the idle is extremely lumpy. The engine will then die, or it might even out and come back for a split second before it goes lumpy and then it will die. It always starts right back up again. The check engine light has stayed out.
Any thoughts? Did I really mess something up?
William