Was fun for 1 day

I had an 81 years ago and noticed after I washed the engine that it would start & idle fine, and go up to about 3,000 RPM and sort of die. When the RPM got down some, it would fire right up again and do the "die" thing and cycle like that continuously. The problem ended up being that water would follow the engine harness (inside the sleeve) to the ECU. Upon removing the long ECU connector, I would find a few drops of water in the connector. I would just dry it out with a paper towel & an air hose, put it back together, and the problem would go away.....until the next time I washed the engine (which I did, reasonably often).
I didn't figure this one out by myself.....I called the dealer that I bought it from and the service manager told me what to look for. Hope this helps.
 
PS- It's pretty cool that it was your grandfather's X. That is what sets it apart from the rest of the cars out there, no matter what kind of car it is.
 
7982X said:
I had an 81 years ago and noticed after I washed the engine that it would start & idle fine, and go up to about 3,000 RPM and sort of die. When the RPM got down some, it would fire right up again and do the "die" thing and cycle like that continuously. The problem ended up being that water would follow the engine harness (inside the sleeve) to the ECU. Upon removing the long ECU connector, I would find a few drops of water in the connector. I would just dry it out with a paper towel & an air hose, put it back together, and the problem would go away.....until the next time I washed the engine (which I did, reasonably often).
I didn't figure this one out by myself.....I called the dealer that I bought it from and the service manager told me what to look for. Hope this helps.
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Thanks for the tip on that. I will pull it and dry it out.
 
The injection may have a fuel economy feature, where it cuts the fuel on closed throttle overrun above around 1200 rpm. If the throttle switch is faulty, or if water has got into the ecu plug, it can cause this effect. The engine runs perfectly at idle and just above, but just dies if you try to rev it over 1200 rpm. I had this issue on my FI converted HPE; I had a tiny split in the underside of the coolant header tank and coolant dripped down the inside of the FI loom wrapping and collected inside the ecu plug. It shorted the pins in the plug and caused the weird symptoms you describe.

EDIT - I just read 7982X had the same problem!
 
WOOHOO!!!! It was just the ignition coil!!!! Finally got to it today and she fired up and took her for a spin!!!
 
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