my friend and his car are making me nuts

Dump the friend.

No! Only kidding....

It is normal for the injectors to fire together - in fact, they are wired in parallel, although each has its own ballast resistor.

The fuel delivery does sound excessive, but we are getting the info second hand. I'm worried about the "throttle closed" issue when the injector output seems so high. I'm assuming the car is a 700 series (740 or 760) at that age, but please clear it up if that is not true. In those cars, the TPS is just a microswitch that is very finely adjusted. You should hear it click softly when the throttle is cracked the tiniest bit. Idle will be very high if the switch doesn't close at idle.

Do pull the vacuum line off the fuel pressure regulator. If there is gasoline in the hose, the regulator is bad.

Mike

The spark and the injection behavior sound normal at this point. Did he take the plug wires off when he replaced the coil? If you have the firing order off by 180 degrees the plugs will all fire when the exhaust valve is open and you get no ignition.

Cheers, Peter.

Well I guess I'm going to have to actually go look at it . Maybe something really simple that he missed . It''s a 740 with a b23f in it . Oddly he said sometimes it would clear itself momentarily if you turned the blower on or off ? I'll get back on this . Thanks gentlemen . Will

A B23F? What year is it? I thought the 740's all had B230F's, the only B23 was the B23FT in the '84 760.

James, didn't the B230F not appear until 1985? IIRC, the 740 debuted before then.

I did go and look and it was something simple he missed . I'm hoping that the warm run issue was the coil going bad and that the 2 fouled plugs were the result . When he gets it all back together we shall see . I really appreciate all of the response . My book says nothing about ALL the injectors working at the same time and I would've probably been a couple miles down the garden path without that tidbit . It very well may be a 230F . I remember telling a doctor once how lucky he was that he only had 2 basic models to deal with and they didn't change from year to year . I'm looking forward to seeing a smile on my friends face for the first time in 2 weeks . Thanks again , Will

Yes the B230F appeared in 1985, the 740 appeared in 1986. Previous to that there was the 760 which came out in (I think) 1983.

Well.................... It ran well enough to show at my place this AM , but that's about it . It is a 230F with CIS . It idles OK but goes competely on it's face at anything over 1500 rpm . At idle the timing is as it should be but when you try to run it up , the timing mark goes berserk to the advance side . ( something like 50+ degrees ) The spark is not very stable . Jumps 3-5 degrees at idle and disappears altogehter at higher rpm . No vacuum advance on this one . Just for giggles I tried checking out the dist. pick-up . Basically open circuits no matter which way you went . I can't imagine it would operational like that but then ................................... If you unplug the CIS , the idle changes ( like I think it would ) . I sent him off to find another dist. and or pick-up in the hopes that ................................. Since I deal mostley with "vintage" stuff and boats , things like this are an adventure into unexplored territiory . Thanks for bearing with me on this , Will

I've seen a couple problems similar to this, though we didn't get CIS B230's over here, nor CIS injected 700 series cars but on an old CIS 240 the little button contact in the center of the distributor cap broke off once and caused very similar symptoms. On another car, the pickup in the distributor had a loose connection causing the circuit to open as soon as the vacuum advance activated. You said this doesn't have vacuum advance though? Doesn't it have a vac hose to the ignition module?

The dist. mounts directly to the aft end of the cam . No vac. lines anywhere near it . New cap and rotor . 3 wires from the pick-up . 1 is a bare stranded ( almost like sheathing , don't ask me how I know ) The content of the dist. is 1 ( one) hall effect sensor and the interrupter wheel . Ohmeter reads open anyway you check it . I can only hope this isn't something that someone fell in love with on vacation and just had to have it . Will

Sounds like exactly the same setup the LH Jettronic injection cars over here have. The hall sensor is actually quite robust, I've heard of them failing but it's not often. I don't recall what they'll read with an ohm meter but it's not a reliable way to test them since they're a semiconductor that needs power to function. The outer sheath of the wire is the shield and likely also provides the ground connection if not through the engine block. One of the other wires should be power and the other signal. The ignition control box on a 700 is mounted up under the driver's feat on the pedal bracket, at least it is on a LHD car, I'm not sure which side it's on for RHD. There's also a knock sensor on the block under the intake manifold, if this is damaged it could cause the timing to be erratic, but unless it's physically busted it's probably ok.

Well .......... This is a U.S. car and the book I have says NADA about a knock sensor or ignition control box . I assume this is something like Gm used to do with what they called ESC ( electronic spark control ) My book ( now in the fireplace ) says that the ignition is controlled by the ECU totally . Armed with this new info , I'm going to look for the probably faulty ignition box and if I find it ................................... This makes more sense as to why the timing is so erratic ( among other things) Thank you James ! Will

A US car? I thought you said it was CIS injected? US spec cars all have LH-Jettronic injection which is an electronic system controlled by a computer mounted to the right of the passenger's feet. CIS is mechanical with an aiflow meter that controls fuel flow directly.

And LH has a separate Ignition Control Unit with a power amplifier stage to drive the coil.

Cheers, Peter.

I did locate the ICU in the car . My friend thought it was an amp for the radio . This explains the symptoms he's had from the day he bought the car . The "not quite as good as it could be " , the blown-up coil , the "OK" cold running and the erratic spark syndrome it's got now . Something that was "off " when he bought it ( going south ) and deteriorated to this point . Makes alot more sense to me since it has never seemed to be a fuel issue . He's off to find another one today . We will see . Thanks Gentlemen , Will

I forgot about the power stage, don't forget to check that. It's a small block mounted to the inner fender near the nose of the car, I forget which side it's on.

Power stage ! What a misleading name for such an innocuous , innocent looking , hard to locate , IMPORTANT part . When we did locate it , turns out that a dealer service department had replaced it with the wrong part( Always serviced by the dealer , even had "Volvo" plugs in it ) . There was one in the fender well ( laying there ) as well as the one I took out. An 8 pin connector on the operational one , 6 pins on the original . Got a junk yard replacement with 6 pins and that cured it . An explaination for all the symptoms it had but would have NEVER thought that would throw the timing like it did . Of course it was the LAST thing I changed . Hope this can save some aggravation for someone else . Thanks , Will

James Sweet wrote:

Dang, usually one can assume that there's at least the *correct* part there, if not a working one.