Help Please

[sw_vile]

Long story short: S14s suck, S13s are better. I converted my 96 from OB2 to OB1 using a jumper harness, ECU and MAF from a 93. The car also has 91 cams, Xcessive intake manifold and other basic bolt ons. Not trying to break records more for my own amusement until I finish gathering all my KA-T parts.

Anyway, When I first put all this together I had a lot of problems with the car running efficiently and it turned into a major headache for awhile. I installed the Xcessive intake, deleted a ton of stuff, and purchased a lot of new sensors (TPS, IACV, coolant temp) and everything was fixed. Been driving the car for around a month and enjoying every second of it.

However, I noticed the other day that during all these changes I had retarded the timing quit a bit and by doing so I probably had a decent bit of power and throttle response left on the table. Which is always a good thing considering how much fun the car is to drive as is. So, i advanced the timing a little, not all the way advanced but in the middle where it was set before all the changes and a place where I felt it would be happy. (I didn't use a timing light or anything because I never removed the distributor so the car should still be in time from when it ran on all the 96 stuff.)

Now, when you drive the car and get on it WOT it pulls decently up to around 4k and then it's like hitting a brick wall, you can feel the car get sluggish and lose power, the only time it will actually pull all the way through the RPM range is when it's at almost full retard. I don't hear any signs of detonation and can't really notice any difference in the way the car idles, just at WOT it sucks.

Can anyone offer any advice or a solution? I do apologize for my long drawn out explanation but I want to make sure I represent the situation as best as I possibly can to make sure the situation is fully understood.

[sw_vile]

EDIT- I do realize the 4k-rpm brick wall could be could by the knock sensor. But the knock sensor is fairly new (maybe 1 year old) and worked perfectly before.

[compactfean]

What maf and ecu are you using?

[sw_vile]

S13 MAF

[compactfean]

Duh! Now I see it in there! Lol, which coil, s14 or 13?

[sw_vile]

Still on the s14 distributor. I've thought about swapping over a s13 distributor and using the MSD blaster coil. But I know a few people who have used the s14 distributor with s13 ecu when going KA-T and never had any spark issues, So I didn't think it would be a necessity here.

[compactfean]

The only things I can think of is not enough fuel or spark at that rpm. Sounds kinda like my buddies car when his fuel pump was ” almost” out.

[sw_vile]

We'll see, I did some tinkering with it over the weekend and noticed the plugs had white caked up on them so I've got to go get plugs, probably wires and I went ahead and ordered a new knock sensor. I'm also going to try and hunt down an S13 distributor and harness pigtail and go ahead and wire all that up.