Hello guys and gals. I'm a newbie to the Nico Club forum and I'm having some problems with my ca18de. Before I get into that I feel its only formal I introduce myself.

My name's Doug, I'm from QLD, Australia and I'm 16 years old. My car is a Nissan Silvia S13 and as you've probably gathered it has a ca18de.

Moving on. The problem I'm having has baffled me (Not hard, my knowledge as far as cars go is pretty slim). The car seems to be missing on idle and everywhere until around 1500rpm and then it runs like a charm although having a slight backfire type pop from the engine bay on hard gear changes.

The car is COMPLETELY Stock. I've recently just put in new coil packs(OEM) and new spark plugs and bumped the timing back to 15 from 20.

Something else to add (Not sure if relevant or not) is the car always had a slight miss although only when you were first on the throttle and then after that first little miss it was sweet, And then yesterday I checked the timing and noticed it was 5 degrees out (20) so I bumped it back to 15 and the car, on power ran considerably better although did have that consistent miss on idle and up until roughly 1500rpm. It also sometimes randomly idles at 400-500ish just out of the blue and other times sits comfortably at 900-1000ish

Someone suggested it could be an idle air valve of a leak in one of the manifold hoses so ill be sure to have a look at that tomorrow

If you have any questions please do ask and ill answer as best as I can. Ill try my best to supply a video tomorrow if needed.

Thanks in advance!!

Make sure you do a diagnostic check of your ecu and get back to us with your results. Hard to really give you any advice at this time. When you say miss, do you mean a temporary dead cylinder type miss or occasional pop while the engine is idling?

For the low idle I would think some sort of post-MAF intake leak (either a vacuum leak or intake tract). The motor is pulling in unmetered air in this condition causing it to run lean. I've experienced this before in my DET. Also, the lean condition could contribute to the misfire.

Iirc, 15btdc is right for a DE. I think it's 10btdc for the DET, so you should be good there.

The TPS could also need adjustment. If it isn't hitting the idle switch the idle quality could suffer. Also, an improper signal may lead to the other issues you're having (misfire) because the throttle is open a different amount than the motor thinks. But this is just my speculation. Idk how detrimental it is and it'd be further down on my list of things to check. The post-MAF leak would definitely be on the top for me.

One more thing, I personally don't think it'll be ignition related (aside from timing). It seems ignition related issues caused by faulty parts generally arise at high engine load. I hope this gives you a good start on your troubleshooting.

Yea, start with the ECU codes and get back to us.

Hey guys,

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to everyone, i forgot all about this post.

Problem is all sorted. Did an ECU diagnostics test and there were no faults. I ended up trying a different TPS and it seemed to have fixed the problem. Haven't had any troubles with it to date!

thanks heaps!

Thanks for updating this post!