7g random cutout during cruising and idle...

[silver_beast98]

My car has been doing this for the past few weeks, but lately it seems to be happening more often. Every now and then while cruising and at idle (hasn't happened at WOT, but i think it could be coincidence, as i don't drive nearly as often at WOT), the engine seems to completely cutout. It isn't your average misfire, because it's incredibly violent. If it happens at idle, the car completely dies, however, it usually happens while cruising and in gear, so it immediately cuts back on. I have had my wires to the positive battery terminal come completely loose before, and if you have ever experienced that, that's exactly how it feels. I checked the wires, and they were fine. Also, my plugs, plug wires, and dizzy cap and rotor are all fairly new, and i don't think any of those could cause such a violent problem anyway. Im thinking it may be a bad coil since they are in the distributor housing and probably hasn't been changed in all the 170,000 hard earned miles.

Any other thoughts on what the problem could be? The coil or a major sensor is all that i can think of that logically fit the bill. How do bad coils usually act? I've never had any experience with this problem before, so any insight is greatly appreciated. If nobody can come up with any other possibilities i think im going to run to the U-pull-it within the next few days and grab a whole distributer setup and throw it on. If that's the problem at least it will be a rather cheap fix...

Thanks in advance for your time and knowledge

-Craig

[mko]

I have exactly the same problem here. It started when it was very cold though so I was thinking about vacuum leak if some of the hoses got stiff.

[silver_beast98]

well if it's truly as violent as mine is then i don't think vaccuum lines can have that much efect on an NA car.. but now mine is getting worse, and when i go to crank it sometimes i have no power. im now fairly sure the problem is far simpler thought. my battery terminals are shit, and are giving a poor connection. so even tho my wiring to the battery terminals is good, the connection to the battery isn't. im going to get some new terminals before i get another dizzy and see if that solves the problem... im fairly sure that's all thats wrong with mine now.

mko, be sure you check all your wire connections really good, and we might both have no more than a 5-10 dollar problem!

[tom04841]

It could also be your ignition switch. Does the radio cut out when the car dies, any dash lights, CEL?

[4-G-rim]

Are you throwing a CEL?

I have experienced your problem and there were to things that could be the possibilities of your "violent cutouts".

1. You have a leak somewhere past the MAF sensor. Granted my issue was on my turbo setup. My recirculating hose cracked and metered air was escaping which was past the MAF sensor.

2. You have a bad MAF sensor. If you do..you should be throwing a CEL. When mine was bad the car would cut in and out, wouldnt rev past 1500rpms at times and just die during idle. Same thing happened to my boys 4Runner...same exact issues as me and I replaced his MAF sensor and ran perfectly.

[tom04841]

any progress?

[95mitsu03]

When this happened to me in my old 95 es it was a problem with the distributor and worn plugs.