I just replaced the plugs, wires, cap, and rotor on my 88 Scirocco
16V. It was running reasonably well before - probably 90% power, with a little bit of hesitation on heavy acceleration. Now, the car has about 20% power. It will crank okay, but has a rough idle and alot of unburned gas coming out of the exhaust. It will rev (slowly) with the clutch disengaged, but barely has enough power to move the car when in gear. If I stomp the gas it hesitates really badly, threatens to stall, then will rev if it's not in gear. The idle is so rough it shakes the whole car.Details - when I first cranked it after changing the parts, I forgot to reconnect the hall sender connector to the distributor. I disconnected it to clean it up. The car wouldn't crank at all without it connected. Also, there was a fair amount of oil in the distributor cap fouling the contacts. However, the car was running fairly well even with the oil fouling. About a week ago while messing around under hood, I inspected the knock sensor lead wire and the insulation disintegrated in my hand. It is still wrapped with an internal plastic wrap, just not the outer black rubber insulation. I looked at the knock sensor and the hard plastic insulator around the sensor itself has also disintegrated. The car has been sitting for about 3 years; this tune-up was to be the beginning of a restoration to start driving it again.
Theories - cranking without the hall sender or a disintegrating knock sensor has put the ignition control unit into "limp-home mode". Archived messages I've read point to bad knock sensors causing limp-home mode, but it was running fine before I changed the ignition parts. Another theory is that cleaning up the distributor around the rotor and hall trigger wheel damaged some oil-soaked internals.
I've checked and triple checked all of the plug wire connections, timing order, coil wire connection, etc. I've tried going back to the old plugs, wires, and cap, but it hasn't solved the problem. I couldn't put the old rotor back on because the new one is glued on too solidly. All of the new parts are genuine Bosch, and I'm using F6DTC tri-electrode plugs. I can't figure out what I did to make it run so poorly. I know that I probably need a new distributor because of the oil leak, and definitely a new knock sensor, but the car was running okay with the old ones. I don't want to throw $300 at the problem just to have it still running bad. So - anyone have any ideas before I order a new distributor?
Thanks Justin