RB20DET Sputters but wont start

A forum for owners and fans of the legendary Nissan Skyline and Nissan GTR.
The_Almighty_Shep
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jan 05, 2019 6:08 pm
Car: RB Swapped S13 Hatch
Location: Washington state

Post

Hey all, i've been around nico for a couple years now but this is the first time i've been stumped by an issue.

So to start, i recently swapped an rb20 into my 89 s13. I did my research beforehand everything went smoothly getting it into the car blah blah blah. Engines in the car and i have some trouble getting it wired to the body harness but i figure it out, no big deal. The issue i run into however is it doesn't like to start. At first i suspect its just cold and my cams are probably not helping any. (i got some nice tomei 270 duration :naughty: , and on top of that its january and ~30 degrees outside) Anyways after a couple days of tinkering with the timing finding ungrounded grounds and whatnot i finally get it running and its awesome! drove it around the block a few times and then it stalls and wont start. come to find out my alternator is toast so i go ahead and do the nisssan quest alt swap, ez pz. Buttttt now the car wont start at all. It sputters and coughs plenty but wont run on its own to save its life. Lot of backstory i know but i figure more info is better. SO here's where i'm at now:

1. i am 99% sure its not my injectors, if i crank for very long i can smell fuel very clearly

2. based on the lack of running right i figured it was my coils. found a couple not working so i got some used off craigslist and replaced them, lo and behold that doesn't solve it. So i checked my ignitor/ptu whatever you wanna call it and followed along with the fsm to the best of my ability. i didn't have continuity between ANY of the pins which doesn't make sense because i know for a fact at least 4 of my coils are working?

3. i took the CAS out and spun it by hand with the key on, i could hear the injectors clicking (double confirmation that those are OK) but i guess the coils are supposed to buzz? i didn't hear anything like that. 1 single time though i did get a small puff of something i heard through the intake while spinning the CAS, not sure what it was.

I'm beginning to get a little annoyed, i suspect the ignitor is bad whether i tested it correctly or not because my number 2 coil isn't firing at all as far as i can tell and i know this is a common problem. However i'm getting tired of pouring money into this thing with no change in its behavior. The part that confuses me the most is that i was able to drive it with no issues on 2 separate occasions (before the alternator swap) but now it wont start at all. I think its also worth noting that i've read a couple of times of RB's running on less than the 4 cylinders than i believe i am so why wont it start and just run like crap?? i'm having a difficult time trying to test coils/injectors simply because i can't see how they effect the idle.

I am running out of ideas and any help would be appreciated


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