RE: V6 stalling

["Chip Mutza" <alfaracer75@xxxxxxx>]

Peter,

I had a very similar problem with my Milano at Willow Springs one time.
Although my car didn't come back to life, it just died and stayed dead for a
couple minutes before it would restart.  I would get the car through the
warmup lap, but then the engine would cut out and the tach would drop to the
peg (even though the motor was still tuning because it was in gear and the
car still rolling). I would get towed in off the track, and by the time I
got back in the pits the car would start and run just fine. In my case it
turned out to be the coil module. As soon as it would get any heat into it,
it would fail and stop firing the coil... and since the tach gets it's
signal from here the tach would read zilch even though the motor was still
turning. I swapped the module out with a used one from Larry and it's been
fine ever since.

Chip Mutza
San Diego, CA
'89 Milano Gold (race car... currently dissasembled)
'87 Milano Gold (beater... future project car)



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Original Message:
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Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 14:33:17 -0700
From: "Peter Kemos" <peterk@domain.elided>
Subject: V6 stalling

I've got a strange malfunction on my '89 Verde which, due to it's
intermittent nature is proving rather tough to diagnose:

While driving, in gear, the car will suddenly loose power for only an
instant, and then just as quickly restore everything back to normal.  This
results in a big lurch of course as power fails, and then another one as it
resumes.
Further it happens so quickly that i actually don't know if the engine cuts
out entirely, or if it merely drops down to idle.  Logic tells me that if it
cut alltogether i would have to hit the starter to get the engine running
again, which i do not, yet the tach drops down to the peg at 500 rpm, thus
indicating an engine speed below idle??  Of course, if the issue was a
system wide power loss, it could account for dead gauges.

In general it happens at a point where the coolant has just reached
operating temperature, but the engine has not completely warmed up.

This cycle repeated itself 3 times this morning, on the way in to work, but
once the engine was fully warmed up it ran just fine and showed no other
signs of a problem.  Overall the engine is well maintained, and does not
show any other signs of poor running or starting.

I'm hoping someone else out there has experienced the same thing at some
point and could comment on possible causes for this behavior since i doubt i
could get the power loss to repeat itself under testing conditions.

Thanks,
Peter Kemos
Santa Cruz

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