924Board.org

[Mr Jorgy]

Hi guys, I have had my 1979 924 n/a for about a year and a half now and it has always ran fine. But, about 4 days ago when I went to start the car back up it seemed a little hesitant but started ok. I took it out of the driveway and when I applied the throttle it responded just like usual but when the engine hit about 3500 rpm, the engine started cutting out like it wasn't getting enough fuel, or one of the cylinders isn't getting a good spark. I have plenty of fuel in the tank, checked the vacuum hoses for good connections, checked the timing, and the distributor for good contact and the problem is still present. I am going to check the plugs and the wires next but I could be working at the problem from the wrong direction. This is my first car and I am new to this type of engine. The sooner I get this fixed the better so any ideas you have are more than welcome.
_________________
79' 924 (first car)

[pmcaya2]

You might want to check the air intake connections on the plastic air duct leading to the top of the fuel distributor. If there is a vacuum leak, there won't be enough vacuum to fully lift the fuel distributor plate at higher rpm. Hope this helps. - Peter

[Mr Jorgy]

I don't know if this will help but I have noticed when I start it with the cold start on, the engines throttle response is normal, but after about 20 seconds or so when the cs valve shuts off the acceleration starts to lag again. Also, the day before the problem happened I was adjusting my clutch cable and I moved around the hose that leads to the charcoal canister a little but I did not take anything off because I took it for a test drive after the adjustment. I have also changed the plug wires, distributor cap and rotor, and I checked the spark plugs which cylinder 1 and 2 were running jut a little bit hot, but 3 and 4 had mild carbon deposit.
_________________
79' 924 (first car)

[pmcaya2]

It must be getting close to the time that 924s hibernate in MT- as they do in rural NY. For what its worth, I've had 2 cases where the car wasn't spinning up even though everything was right and I replaced plug wires, plugs, distributor cap, etc.

In one case I finally figured out that I had a vacuum leak in the plastic air intake duct that feeds the fuel distributor, per my previous post. It's not a bad idea to use electricians tape to seal the junctions.

The second case was hard to believe. I removed the timing belt cover and saw a dead mouse staring back at me. It appears that his demise slipped the timing belt by 2 or 3 cogs. I did a post on this after a friend of mine told me that the same thing happend on his VW (similar engine). I wrote a post on timing belt alignment in the "how to" section of this forum. You might want to check this. Timing can slip do to oil, ice,.... or mice.

I hope that this helps - let us know if you fix the problem. - Peter