KA Help Needed AS

[glacier985]

Before I start, being the idiot I am, I tired to hook up my A/F gauge in the dark and I think I totaly screwed up my car. Now the useless gauge is in a bunch of pieces to say the least.

Anyway, on with the problem. Now I'm not a KA newb I just need some help. I stripped the oxygen sensor wire to hook up the gauge not knowing that it was actually two wires. A white wire inside a silver (insulating maybe) wire. After I did this the car ran like **** and died on my today and smelled of gas. The car was running super rich and was missing terribly, and the tach was jumping all over the place, even to 8K . IDK why this would happen, I know the car is running super rich because of the o2 wire being screwed, but would this mess up the tach and make the car miss???? Keep in mind everything was find before I messed with the wire.

I will be running the ECU for codes tonight to see what it says and then I will be getting a new harness from my friend unless there is a way to fix my o2 wire. Anyone have any ideas???

thanks in advance

[glacier985]

Almost forgot the car will start and run for a while after I let it sit. Then it will die and not start unless it sits. It idles fine until I go to drive it.

[1991S13]

Wow, what were you doing at 8k?

Im guessing it's just because you messed up the o2 sensor wire. The o2 sensor keeps track of how rich/lean you are running, so if you messed it up it's obviously not giving the right info back to the car, thus making it run rich.

[deviousKA]

Cut that wire that you connected, and strip the car's o2 wire down to seperate the 2. I assume you still have your a/f gauge connected and wired in? Get them all seperated so nothing is shorting before you do anything else.

I dont really know how these a/f gauges work or how they wire in, but they probably need the signal from the inner wire. Find the exact install instructions.

Your car should run ok without the o2, after a certain amount of starts it should ignore the o2 completely if its disconnected. Shorted wires woudl be a different story, your ecu probably kicked to full limp mode.

[glacier985]

I disconnected the A/F gauge, its gone, useless POS anyway.

I should have mentioned this in the first place, but I already did what you said to do Gabe and its still messed up. I seperated the wires and reconnected them, is it possible that there was a short and it messed up the o2 sensor?

And from what your saying I can run the car without the o2 sensor and after a bunch of starts it should run fine?

[glacier985]

Just got the code from the ECU, two red, on green, that means

21 Ignition signal missing in primary coil

what to do now???

[deviousKA]

technically it should go into full open loop mode after the certain number of starts with the o2 disconnected or removed, how many starts im not sure.

Have you disconnected your battery and erased the codes since this happened? Do that, maybe a couple times, and then run it a while longer. Check your codes after that to see if anything comes up.

I kind of doubt that shorting the wires would ruin the o2, would ruin something on the other end more likely.

PS, I have never run across an actual fried ecu. That should be the very last thing you should consider, unless the diagnostic light is not responding.

[glacier985]

I might have to try that tomorrow. I think I'm going to get another stock coil and check it as well, after some searching it seems that might be the problem.