S.O.S. at wit's end!
 

I have an '82 380 SEC and I can't get it to go! The car starts right up with no problem even if it’s been sitting for a week or two. The problem arises as soon as I try to accelerate. When I do the car simply dies! If I try to slowly push on the accelerator the car tries to rev up but quickly dies. The only other thing I have noticed that might be related is the "economy" gauge in the instrument cluster is always showing low fuel economy. It's usually a little bite pass the half-way mark. What to do? :confused:

Either you'r guage is defective,or you most likely have a vacuum leak.If you can't find any disconnected or bad hoses.Then either it's a gasket leak or the brake booster.The booster is the least likely though.If it is a gasket on the intake,but it's hard to find which.You can spray a SMALL ammount of WD40 along each gasket with the engine idleing.When the idle speed increases,you;ve found you'r leak.Just please oh please,do not use ether to find the leak,or you could end up needing a new engine instead of a gasket.

If the car starts and idles, I doubt you have much of a vacuum leak. if it idles poorly also that would be a possibility. If too much air is a hypothesis, then add fuel. The simple trick is to lightly push down on the airflap (air filter housing removed). If the engine runs better, continue till it starts running worse. If the speed when it runs the best is above 1000rpms you definitely have too much air entering. It could still be metered air though if the idle valve is too open.

Adjust the fuel mixture then at the adjustment till best running. Now try to accelerate. If it still dies, do the gentle push thingy again while accelerating by hand with your other hand. KEEP YOUR FACE away from the airflap as it could backfire. Be sure your frequency valve is buzzing during all of this.

If you can not overcome this hesitation with a functioning frequency valve and added fuel then one might look to low secondary ignition voltage or a shorted path to ground. Rotor fingers are common shorts to ground. It happens when the short becomes conductive at a voltage just above what is needed to idle; say at 11kv. At 8kv the car idles but as the loadingf increases off idle the requirements grow to say 14kv. If the rotor shorts at 11kv then all the spark passes to ground through the distributer shaft and teh engine dies.

Steve,

What causes the rotor to short? I have never heard of that. I have seen carbon tracks in a cap. Is it a carbon track on the rotor or a crack in the rotor?

Mike

well
 

i would def replace the rotor. i once had a 280e that i bought for $200. it would start up fine and idle nicely, even drive fine til it got warm then it would not run hardly at all. after changing everything under the sun from injectors to dist caps plug wires etc. it turned ou t that the new rotor was about 1/8" too short. and when the engine warmed up and the mixture leaned out it would nt fire.

so change the rotor and make sure it is the right length. dont know how to do that but if using a correct bosch unit yuou should be fine.

look at the dist cap. look at the contacts are they chewed away, is the center carbon point sorn away does it spring up into the top as it should?

good luck

tom w

Tunneling is the word I think. The voltage goes from the center straight down into the shaft instead of passing through the built in resistor. All forms of excess resistance including worn plugs, bad wires, and damaged internal resister probably increase chances of such a failure. Many that I have seen have also been POS aftermarket ones. I would throw away any rotor that is black. All Bosch rotors are brown.

Update!!!!
 

Over the weekend I changed both the fuel filter and pump. That did seem to make a difference in the performance of car - the idling got smoother. However, it still will only rev up to about 800-900 rpm before dieing. What I tried next was as you guys in the forum recommended. First, I tried changing the rotor with a new one. To my surprise there are actually two rotors for my car and it turns out that my car was running of the short one. So, I replace it with the slightly longer rotor. I had an immediate response, the car was idling perfectly at 550 rpm and I was able to rev up to 1000 - 1500 before dieing. The next thing I tried was looking for the vacuum leak. I used the old cab cleaner trick and I noticed that the only time the engine would respond was when I sprayed around the fuel injectors. In fact, there were bubbles right at the base of each injector. Is this the leak? Or does it simply mean the injectors are bad? If that's the vacuum link is there a sealant I can use so I don’t have to replace the injectors? Am I on the right track or is there something else I should be looking at?