Sluggish...No power at beginning of gears

[SlidnSideways]

I just rebuilt the head on my 89 240sx ka24e and replaced the timing chain. Finally got the car running today and it runs great but just seems to be missing something up until about 3000 rpms. Once i hit 3000 the car takes off not very noticable but i dont think its done it before. I have done a full tune up, and replaced the coolant temp sensor as well.

Also, another prob may have something to do with that but i doubt it. My car idles fine when first started at 750 but after driving for 10 mins or so when i stop the idle is at close to 1500.

Im thinking my tps might be alittle wacked cause my dad just adjusted it by ear today...(dont really trust his ears) so ill check that tomorrow but are there any other ideas? I believe my timing is set at something like 18 BTDC.

THANX

--Tim--

[SlidnSideways]

Anybody have any ideas? I fixed my tps so that the voltage was .450 at idle.

When i replaced the plugs i think i got bosch. After searching a bit ive noticed a few people saying that bosch are crap and ngk are better. Should i replace?

--Tim--

[NISTECH]

Replace the plugs with NGK.How is you idel now that you adjusted the TPS?

[SlidnSideways]

My idle is steady but after it gets warm it creeps up to around 1400. I adjusted the tps. The problem thats really bugging me now is that my car will lose power for a split second while driving. My headunit will turn off then back on and if im in the middle of running out a gear it just stops. It happens in like 2 minute intervals and im thinking maybe i have a bad connection to the battery or something?

Also, my header started to rattle loose again so im not sure what im gonna do anout that. I tried to drill out the stuck stud in the head last weekend with my father and he insisted on squeezing his big bulky drill in there instead of using my smaller one and drilled the side of the hole where the threads are instead of in the middle. Any ideas?

[SlidnSideways]

Yup the car is slowly progressing from not working at all to now just a few problems. Im definatly getting there. Anyway an update!

1. Idle still smooth but creeps to 1400 when warm. Timing (i believe) is around 17 or so btdc tps is putting out .450 volts at idle so im not too sure about that.

2. Header rattled loose a bit causing the exhaust leak...again... *sigh* not to sure how to fix this because i have 2 studs missing but one hole is stripped and the other has a stud jammed in it. Dad tried to drill it but messed up terribly and drilled the side of the hole where the threads were and made it oblong shaped...

3. My exhaust, in the back it pushing up against the rear bumper causing this NASTY grinding noise when revved. Im assuming it has something to do with the angle that the header and exhaust are hooked up but not sure how to fix it.

4. ...AND... the latest problem!! The car dying for a split second. While in the middle of driving the car looses power for less than a second. When i shut it off it also does the same thing about 90% of the time. I wiggle the positive wire on the battery terminal and it comes back on so maybe i just need to clean off the terminals...hopefully... Anybody have ANY insight on ANY of these many problems?

Thankyou for the continuous efforts!

--Tim--

[xekushnr]

4. ...AND... the latest problem!! The car dying for a split second. While in the middle of driving the car looses power for less than a second. When i shut it off it also does the same thing about 90% of the time. I wiggle the positive wire on the battery terminal and it comes back on so maybe i just need to clean off the terminals...hopefully... Anybody have ANY insight on ANY of these many problems?--Tim--

Yes, that is most likely your problem. Tighten that positive terminal quick, because if it wiggles loose and grounds out you will have a lot more stuff to replace. I had installed a sub in my daily driver and left the positive wire a little loose (by mistake of course) and one morning when I tried to leave for school I was greeted with no power in my car. The cable had come off but luckily was not touching anything.

[NISTECH]

1) possibly a vaccum leak or a poor connection to the air regulator. That regulator will cause the idle to creep up if its bi metal element opens.

2) you need to keep ole dad away from the car. You now need to drill the whole slightly larger and either use a 10mm stud and nut or insert a helicoil that wil give you the 8mm stud hole back. Dont drill beyond the length of the existing stud. If you do you could hit a water jacket [not a good thing] As you can see this will require some precision. Dad seems like the type that does things by feel [ again not a good thing]

3) loosen the mounting flanges at all interconnecting pipes and adjust the pipeing on the hangers so it doesnt hit. Then retighten all the flange bolts.

4) check the 2 terminal plugged into the positive battery cable end. Make sure their contacts are clean and that they are fully seated in the connectors.

[SlidnSideways]

Ok well tomorrow are the big jobs. Hopefully problems 2 and 3 will be fixed. Problem 1 im still not to sure about how to go about fixing but will start off looking for vacuum leaks i guess.

Now onto 4. I cleaned off the terminals, tightened up the clamp things, and it didnt help. I loose power for a brief second about every 2 mins. I did however find that my power cord for my amp that is attached to the positive terminal had shattered where the fuse goes. Now the connection to that isnt very solid. Could this be causing the power loss? If so, how could this be cutting power to the whole car and not just to the amp?

--Tim--

[NISTECH]

Your amp line shouldnt be effecting the cars power unless it was shorting out [ which would be obvious] I was not reffering to the cable clamp to the battery posts. I was refferring to the 2 wires plugged into the postive battery cable block that is attached to the positive cable post clamp. It is not uncommon for either end of those to wires to come loose or build corroision causeing a poor connection.

[SlidnSideways]

Wow...ummmm....NISTECH...

I think i messed up....

I got the stud out of the hole but it was awquardly shaped cause of dads trigger happy drill hand. I made the hole bigger and im trying to get a helicoil inside now but i cant get it in. Annnnnndddddd....i think im in over my head!

Now i have a hole that is the size i need for the helicoil to be but i can only get about half the helicoil in. Im afraid to drill to far because of that water jacket u mentioned. Im starting to freak out lol

--Tim--

[SlidnSideways]

Lol...i didnt listen to the first part of that number 2 u posted..... I got the stud out of one of the places drilled tapped and placed in the helicoil. Works like a charm...Now the one that my dad messed with is kinda funny shaped. Theres no way im getting the stud out but he just opted to drill it...(with the stud in place) Should i be worried about that at all? There is a hole there but is there any way he could be just pushing the stud back in the hole by drilling? The hole isnt the prettiest either. So tomorrow im gonna have to get a 10mm bit and tap it for the same size bolt or possibly drill it a bit bigger....AGAIN... and use a 10mm helicoil. Dude i swear this car is giving me MUCH more pain than what its worth....

--Tim--

[NISTECH]

I would steer away from making it big enough for a 10mm helicoil. try to stay with an 8 or drill and make the hole 10mm. I am not sure how this think looks right now but there is another trick you can use if you have any of the original stud left and big enough to run a very tiny drill bit into. This will take an incredably steady hand and paitence. Tiny drill bits break much easier then larger ones so dont push to hard on it. once and if you are able to achieve this difficult task and get a second hole in this stud. You have 2 choices one try to use a punch and hammer to turn this thing out a bit or move enough to reposition the off center portion of the stud so you can hit it inward into the area it was originally drilled. You are actualy trying to cave it in so it comes out of the threads in the hole. option 2 is once the small hole is drilled use a chisel to create a valley as close to the center of the original diameter of the stud so you can take a second attempt at drilling it center for extraction. Those are your choices ,but again I dont really know what it looks like so neither of those could be an option if it is really bad. Do you have a way to get a snap shot of it and post it?

[SlidnSideways]

LOL.... yea a forum full of car enthusiasts and im gonna post up a picture of the masacre of my head due to a trigger happy father!

Ummm i can try to get ahold of a digital camera but not sure when. Basically that lovely father of mine took a big bit like a size too big for the original hole and drilled straight into the stud. Then when down about 2 sizes and drilled into it again except on the right hand side... The thing is all kinda messed up and right now it looks like the only way i could fix it would be to use the bigger bit and finish the drilling job to make it atleast an even hole thoroughly and then find a way to tap it or put a helicoil in or something but lets put it this way... The 8mm helicoils after placing them inside....Have room to move around



--Tim--

[SlidnSideways]

Ok dude i got it. The one hole was easily done and i managed to fix up the hole my dad chopped up. Not the most oem looking in the world but serves the same purpose.

The problem with my power has also stopped after cleaning off those wires and the terminals so im hoping thats the end of that as well.

The exhaust prob hasnt however. I have an apexi n1 exhaust new catalytic conv and hotshot header. Where the header and cat connect there is a little gap. They sit like this ( Header ====\ /=== Cat ) lol sorry thats the best i could do for now. Thats the header pipe with the flange and the cat with the flange where they are supposed to connect they sit crooked. I can correct the gap between the two by tightening the bolts hella hard but there still seems to be the smallest gap and by tightening them down my exhaust tip is pressed up against the bottom of my rear bumper. I tried to do the hanger thing like you said but by tightening the flange it seems to pull the exhaust back up.

Any Ideas?

--Tim--

[NISTECH]

flip the cat over and re attached it. And I dont mean flip it front to back I mean flip it top to bottom.

[SlidnSideways]

NISTECH, The car is running awesome! After replacing the air filter, finding a vacuum leak, and adjusting the timing, the car came alive again!

I still think i MAY have an exhaust leak though. When i rev the engine i get a rattling similar to the rattle of a heat shield. Since i replaced the cat do you think the top heat shield could be doing this? Im not thinking its that because the cat is brand new.

I also have another rattle type noise that sorta sounds like its comming from the inside, upper part of the engine. I did the timing chain replacement myself and i know its not the guide rattle but i think i remember the guy at the machine shop telling me that the new rockers and stuff he installed may be a bit louder. My neighbor also tells me it may be because of my new hotshot header i dont have the insulation as the old bulky cast iron header to block the noise and its normal. Does that sound right? Im going to go change my oil as soon as my car cools down but i also remember finding a rubber, gasket-like sealer looking thingy under my car when i replaced the head and after thinking about it im thinking it was the rubber liner around the oil filter (perhaps from over-tightening?) Anyway could this be causing the second rattle noise?

Im sorry im bugging you so much about this P.O.S i wish it would just work for me cause i hate hating my 240 lol.

(EDIT: I changed my oil and checked over possibilities.... Guess whats missing 2 bolts again! ...im tired of this....

--Tim--
Modified by SlidnSideways at 10:33 PM 8/30/2005

[NISTECH]

Hey man we have all been there. This is why my 240 sits in my garage untouched after 3 weeks. Always forseeing the inevitable problems. Its not just 240s, all cars have some quirk. I need to put my intake back on after I redesign the vaccum hose layout and operation. I just dread what problems I am going to encounter once I get it back together and fire it up. It seems like there is always something.

Is it the same 2 that you repaired that fell out? Are you torquing them to spec when you install them and then rechecking the torque after a warm up cycle or 2? With headers you need to do that and then recheck them every so often as the steel used for the header is more suseptable to expasion and contraction then cast is.

[SlidnSideways]

Well...One bolt is the same... The one that i had to fix from my dads masacre. I cant remember what size i ended up using but its something (i think) alittle bigger than 10mm. Not much more i can do to solve that problem. The other one was another stud that snapped in half. I know how to solve the broken stud problem but im all outta ideas with the big azz hole in my head.

What type of options do i have to deal with? I guess i could always tap it again but if it didnt even last 100 miles last time i doubt it will last much longer this time. Is there perhaps anything i can buy like a liquid metal type thing (Jb Weld perhaps) that i can fill in the hole with and wait to dry then maybe drill another 8 mm hole?

Oh and i forgot to tell you in that late night inspection i checked out everything and borrowed my neighbors timing light again. My timing was set to something in the ballpark of 27ish btdc. I dont know how it got there but that was kinda bad. I adjusted that and my tps again then turned my idle screw to get my idle at like 750ish. The problem is thats the idle when its warm now. When it starts its barely clinging on at 550 600ish. I guess i still have a few more adjustments to make to that.

--Tim--

[NISTECH]

Sounds like you aux air reg is not opening when its cold. It might have a bad connection. Dont make that hole any bigger. drive it down to a machine shop and ask them if they can fill the whole and then tap in a 8mm x 1.25 hole for a new stud/. I am affraid if you make that whole any bigger you will strike coolant.

[SlidnSideways]

Hmmmm ok ill call up the machine shop that did my head. They might cut me a break being a return customer plus they like my brother cause he went to them to build his sr20. Would they be able to fill the hole while the head is still in the engine bay? I really would not like to take the thing apart again....

What about this aux air thing? How would i go about doing this?

--Tim--

[NISTECH]

If its an actual machine shop , not an auto repair shop they should be able to do it with out pulling the head, you will however need to remove the header for them to get access.

The air reg is in the intake manifold area. If you look therough the runners you can see it about in the middle. You need to check the electricel connection plugged into it. best accessed from where the egr valve is, you will need to pul the whole egr valve off probably.

[SlidnSideways]

Hey i just found a yellow clip on the back of the intake plenum that wasnt hooked up. Its all chewed up and i guess it fell off. Could this be why my idle was wrong?

And the round cylinder thing attached to my plenum with all of the vacuum hoses attached to it was missing the one that comes into it from underneath. Would that be the cause of the idle too?

--Tim--
Modified by SlidnSideways at 10:07 PM 9/2/2005

[NISTECH]

Yep, all three of those connectors back there are for idle control under different conditions.

[SlidnSideways]

Dude the machine shop thinks they found the leak. There was a small gash going from a bolt hole straight to the port which they think may have been causing the leak. I put it back together again like a humpdy and it wont start. It sounded like a timing problem when i tried to start it and after looking i noticed my distrib is pointing at plug #1 or very close to it while my marks on my crank are about an inch to the left of that needle. I dont understand how the distrib and bottom half of the engine could be off from each other because i didnt touch the bottom half at all and preserved timing when i took the head off by zip tying the chain. Please tell me i dont have to take it all back apart again to fix it.

--Tim--

(oh i forgot to add that when i try to turn the chain from the cam sprocket it wont budge more than a half inch or so. It wont turn at all!)

UPDATE : I reset the timing by turning the block and head without the chain attached then re-attaching it after they were both at tdc...The car starts but is rough and only stays started when you give it gas. It sounds terrible like an exhaust leak but i cant seem to find one and the part that im afraid of the most... When its running it sounds like something metal is rattling. I think its inside the engine, my father thinks otherwise.

Modified by SlidnSideways at 1:48 PM 9/9/2005
Modified by SlidnSideways at 4:57 PM 9/9/2005

[NISTECH]

This isnt good. You may have bent a valve. You are not suppose to turn the cams and crank independantly of each other. I have to wonder still if one of your timing components is not properly set.

[SlidnSideways]

When i got the head back from the shop it wasnt matched up with the block. I had to turn them separatly to get them both at tdc.

Before when we tried to crank it after we got the 2 metal to metal banging noises we tried to turn the cam with the chain attached and it turned about 3/4 of the way and stopped dead in either direction. It wouldnt go to tdc. Same thing for when we tried to turn the crank. After disconnecting the chain and moving the cam alittle past tdc the crank would go the whole way around and would get to tdc and the same for the cam now as well. So i connected the chain back up and go over everything. Timing looks to be set damn near perfect. We start it and it wont stay started unless gas is down, which i think may have to do with my throttle cable, and there is a clanking noise as well as an exhaust leak noise.

Any Ideas?

--Tim--

[NISTECH]

If you turned the crank an entire revolution with the head installed you bent a valve or 2. This would cuase a serious run condition not to mention noise. You could also have a serious vaccum leak causing it to die on you.

[SlidnSideways]

Well i pulled the plugs earlier today cause i was gonna set each cylinder to tdc individually and check for anything that may have been dropped or broken off into the cylinders...Didnt like what i saw at all....

Plugs 1 and 4 were fine save a very slight bend inward of the curvy piece that arcs the spark. 2 and 3 were shattered on the ends. The pistons, from what i can see through the spark plug holes are all chewed up. Im willing to bet the valves are not any better. I guess thats my fault...thats an obvious fault in timing from what i understand.

So at what point do you give up? Im 19 going to college full time and only pulling in about $100 a week or so. So far since i bent the valves the first time causing all this trouble i have put something ridiculously close to 2 grand into the motor only to have it happen again. Im thinking this may be the end of the line for the 240 cause ive just about had it with problems and personally dont have the money to keep dumping into this beast.

--Tim--

[NISTECH]

You sir are on a site full of 240 owners. Perhaps there is one some what close to you that just did a sr swap and has a perfectly good KA lying in his garage he has no use for. Try posting in general or your regional forum asking if anyone has such an engine they want to unload. I am willing to bet there is someone around there that would feel for ya and give it up.

[SlidnSideways]

Yea i have a friend with a 98 ka24de lying around with 30 some thousand miles on it he was gonna give to me for i think $400 but im not about to put in a new engine. How much do you think shops normally charge to swap engines for me?

--Tim--