Miata Mailing List: February 1999, Message #125

sponsored by

I think that most will tell you to put new NHK plug wires in.  It's
difficult to see a bad wire arcing.  I had similiar symtoms about a month
ago.  Came on very sudden, lasted about 1 week, and then went away.  I
replaced the wires with Magnecores just to be safe.

Pete
91 BRG
Northern Virginia
Capitol Chapter: http://www.mscw.com




>OK.  I am hurting because my poor little blue car is hurting.  I
>traded cars for the day, my '92 Mariner Blue for my friends
>Mustang 5.0.  Although I don't get a real kick out of driving those
>(having already owned a couple) he wanted to experience the Miata
>experience.  I thought a conversion was in the making.  Well,
>maybe not.
>
>He brings it back to me after the Super Bowl and it is limping
>along, to say the least.  I have owned her for a year, and it now has
>30K miles on it.  No problems ever until now.  Here are the
>symptoms:  hard starting, small "pops" from the tail pipe, erratic
>idle ranging +-500 rpm, extreme loss of torque, and hesitation and
>jerking at low rpm.  When the car jerks on acceleration, a clunking
>or popping noise can be heard.  He said this started after putting
>3.5 gallons of Super America 93 octane in it.  I have pretty much
>ruled out bad gas by filling up the tank and adding water remover to
>no avail.  Also, SA says they have moisture sensors in their tanks
>and received no complaints of bad gas recently.  I have also
>changed plugs, for lack of a better idea.  What could it be?  Timing
>chain, plug wires (which I checked for arcs), catalytic converter?
>Please help my baby!
>
>Thanks,
>David Karpik
>
>