Lost Power 1990 190E
 

This is on my 190E 16v

My car WAS running great this week, but has just lost all it's power. I'll tell you what happened in case it's relevant. The fuel light had been on a little while and I filled up at a different fuel station than normal. I drove approximately 20-25 miles, and the car was running really well and accelerating fast. An hour or two passed and I did another 1 mile journey and it was still running well. But coming back to the car 1/2 hour later, when i got onto open road I realised there was no power - it had just disappeared! I can keep up with traffic ok but that is it. I need far more revs to pull away quickly. It feels like my 2.0 8v and has now been like this 2 days.


The weird thing is, nothing else about the engine has changed. It starts fine, idles fine warm and cold, does not smoke. There is no misfire, it revs to the redline fine, throttle response is normal, but it just isn't making anything close to the power it should, its is flat throughout the whole rev range! I have checked and it has full throttle travel. It's not making any noises - well nothing louder than the usual 16v clatter. All electrical connections seem to be fine and the X11 diagnosis (it's a 1990/1991 car) showed no faults.

Could it be bad fuel? I hope so, but surely that wouldn't take as long as 25 miles to make a difference? Otherwise, arrggh what could it be? Timing chain jumped??

What can I do?

Just an update.. the compression was bad so I've taken off the head for reconditioning