Hi guys,
I'm having some troubles with the old girl at the moment (the car that is...) and am hoping to get some advice.
The car:
1997 Vitara JX LWB G16B. Lifted 2 inch and has 235/75s and stock tires. Problem occurs with both sets of wheels. Daily drive it highway and backroads to work, 320000km on the clock.
The problem:
Boggs down/retards (according to the apprentice mechanic..) when you accelerate more than gently until it hits 2.5 to 3K RPM then goes fine. It's like you accelerate and it seems like it's holding itself back then suddenly, off we go! No other problem with how it drives.
Other info:
Had a full new exhaust about a month ago
Has a new dizzy, plugs, fuel pump about 2 months ago
Has had oil in the plug tubes - not sure if it is good now, will check this weekend
Pings a bit when it pulling hard up a hill.
This has been a bit of a reoccurring problem. Long story short:
Drove it up the blue mountains for half hour with no problems - going for a trip. Stoped for food and when I got back in it wouldn't pull up the hill unless low range and +3000 RPM.
Mechanics cleaned the O2 sensor, plug tubes and something else I can't recall right now and it seemed to be fine
A week later it started coming back - just a little miss at first then got to the point where I had to hold it at 3K and slide the shit outa the clutch to get it moving. If you're really gentle (on the flat and very slow acceleration) it'll get going as normal.
Took it for a service and the mechanics played with the timing - it was firing TDC(!). they set it to 5 deg and it helped, set it to 10 deg and it mostly went away. Has now come back in the same gradual way. The apprentice said it looked to him like the ECU would retard the engine at low revs under load before it let it go properly.
Quick info about the dizzy (another saga of incompetent mechanics) in case it's related and to explain TDC:
She cut out on the HWY one day. Mobile mechanic reckoned it was the dizzy.
After a LOT of fcuking around got a new coil pack and crank angle sensor and rebuilt it and put it in myself. Still didn't go.
Got the mobile mech to look and he couldn't figure it out.
Got a friend who builds race car engines to help and we traced it to the FI fuse. Then traced that to the fuel pump being in failure mode. New fuse and Fuel pump and she was away. Nobody checked the timing (I don't know how/have the gear and had asked the mobile mechanic to do it
). I'd managed to set it to TDC by fluke.2 weeks (about) later the above issue starts.
I'm planning on taking it back to the mechanics but I'd be super appreciative if you guys could make some suggestions. Would be good if I could point them straight at a few possible things. Might also be something easy for me and a mate to sort out.
Cheers.