hi all,

OK, so car was shimmying, bucking and not accelerating.... called my mechanic who suggests that i loosen spark plug wires from plugs while car is not running and un-touch plugs from wires one at a time to see which cylinders may not be getting spark. that goes OK, and 2 of them don't respond to the wires being removed, which tells me that something isn't right involving cylinders 2 & 4....

question 1- can spark plugs be bad even if they look OK? know-it-all boyfriend insists that since they looked good, the plugs must be fine.... i'm not so sure about that & would like a second opinion.


after all that was done, i'm checking out wires - they seem fine when tested against the good cylinders/plugs.....

here's the "i'm not sure if these things are related" part:
i disconnect battery, boyfriend removes cylinder cap to take a look at that....once everything is re-connected, battery appears to be drained and car won't start. before we removed cylinder cap, battery was fully charged and car started...an ran, but not well..., after cylinder cap replaced, no juice whatsoever......(power locks not working etc)....

is there any connection between the removal/replacement of the distributor cap and the battery draining? battery was totally dead within 10 minutes of cap being removed, and battery worked and seemed OK before the cap was removedt... i don't see any connection between removal of plugs and wires to the battery issue, especially since i've done that before with no problem. battery connections are clean and good.

know it all boyfriend also insists that doing something that killed the battery does not constitute "making the problem worse" - aargh!

anyway, if you could tell me if the dist' cap removal & dead battery are connected, or if some other component of the experiment caused the dead battery, that'd be great. strangely, i'm not so worried about the other stuff, it seems easier to figure out than the inexplicable (to me) dead battery.

(and boyfriend doesn't get to "help" me work on the car anymore" :)

thanks,

susan.


--
Emperor for Life - Leaky Volvo Club of America (LVCOA)

About the battery, I'm sure you have don't the clamps on tight. You do have it connected to the right terminals?

That does sound strange about cylinders 2 and 4. I'm not to familar with the 83, does it use the LH or CIS system. It's either a simple problem or major. If you get restarted, try switching the wires to rule out bad wires.

Hi Haroon,

The battery clamps/cables were, and are on tight - the car gained a little power overnight, which shows that the battery IS connected, but not enough to start it this A.M....

re: switching cables: I only disconnected the ground, so crossing the battery cables wasn't an option. It wasn't a disconnected battery issue - I made sure of that yesterday - I wish it was though, since that's an easy fix.

car is LH-jet....

-susan.





--
Emperor for Life - Leaky Volvo Club of America (LVCOA)

When you re-attached the negative cable did you tap it on with a hammer or when you were tightening the clamp bolt did the clamp/terminal seem like it had a lot of "flex". I've seen marginal batteries die like this because (I'm guessing here) maybe the connection from the battery innerds broke/partially broke contact with the terminal?

As far as only running on two cylinders what you have done by disconnecting the plug wires one-by-one is to isolate two cylinders that aren't producing any power for whatever reason. You have eliminated the spark plug wires so iw ould think the next step would be to determine if you have spark at those two plugs. If you do then you need to verify fuel is being squirted on those two. Were the two plugs from the non-powered cylinders wet or gassy smelling? I would think that if gas was being squirted and the plugs were not firing for some reason the plugs would be wet or gassy smelling.

If you've got spark and gas then maybe do a compression check to see if compression is still normal in those two.

Good Luck,

Justin B.
83 244 Turbo

didn't tap on it with a hammer & the everything looked good -.... the weird thing too is that this is a new battery - less than 6 months old.
--
Emperor for Life - Leaky Volvo Club of America (LVCOA)

OK, probably not the terminal coming apart inside then, probably should put it on a slow charge overnight and see what happens!

Then the battery is dead. Strange timing.

But as far as the buckling, you either have bad wires or something major. Try switching them with the good cylinder.

Since it's an LH, check the fuel injector ground wires. These are the black wires that connect to the intake manifold. Also on the distributor cap, make sure that the copper nodes are clean for dead cylinders. Also take a look at the carbon brush type thing in the cap. Make sure it's not too worn.

good idea - i'll try those ideas - thanks!
--
Emperor for Life - Leaky Volvo Club of America (LVCOA)