Coil testing ...sounds expensive...but not really.

Well my friendly LPG installer has given me some great service and we are on the way to tracking down the issue. We have eliminated the spark plug issue so far i.e. replacing all the plugs. We have diagnosed the engine misfire on cylinder one for definite. He simply swapped over the engine coils ! from cylinder 1 and cylinder 2. So we still have a misfire on cylinder 1 even though we swapped over the coils which hold the spark plugs.

Basically cars used to have distributors and leads and spark plugs - now they have coils and spark plugs and electronics etc. seems like loads has changed since I used to poke around under the bonnet of my 1000 cc run around at uni.

Next step - we will replace the gas injector on cylinder 1 and see if that helps things. he reckons this will be a 45 min job.

I'll let you know how we get on.

SPARK PLUG BONANZA!

Well its got to servicing time on the car. I have had at serviced at a main dealer (probably for the last time) the car is old enough now that I will probably get it serviced somewhere cheaper next time round. Before I got it serviced an engine warning light popped up as I was accelerating. No major problem took it in and diagnosed a cylinder miss fire on No 1 cylinder. So they changed over the spark plug on it. Then I decided to change all the spark plugs on it to resolve the problem totally. It has to a point it no longer comes on when accelerating between 2800 revs and 4000 revs in 3rd / 4th and 5th gear it only comes on between 3800 revs and 4100 revs. so the range of the problem is now reduced. I think it will need a little fine tuning on the engine management system to get the gas flow working a bit better when accelerating harder. Bad news however is my friendly LPG guy had a flood burst pipe due to the freezing weather - wrote off his diagnostic computer. So I will need to wait until he gets it back to fine tune the management system again. I did some research and apparently there are spark plugs out there that can be used with LPG systems - apparently NGK make them. What I do not know is if they are compatible with my Toyota corolla, the heat and burn rate of LPG and if they are worth installing. Any way I'll only pursue this option if these new plugs give up quickly. Some guy wrote to me recently and asked me for more details on the conversion on the verso. I'll get these pics up some time soon.