we've beaten it! Alex & Tony 1, Megasquirt 0,

tony popped over tonight for a look into my MS dilemma, well it has been said before so i will say it again, IT WAS SO TRIVIAL! After a little head scratching and a cup of tea tony came into his element and managed to solve the problem that has been bugging me for days. after a little fiddling with some setting in megasquirt the car fired up but was only running on 2 cylinders, so after replacing the plugs in cylinder 1 & 2 we gave it another go, fire up straight away! but now running on 3 cylinders, so i will have to replace the other plugs tomorrow as i didn't have any other new ones. so trivial! 2 duff plugs! still running rich as a b***h though so ill have to tone down the fuel table tomorrow.

A MASSIVE THANKYOU TO TONY.

one thing i dont understand though and someone might be able to explain is that all 4 of the original plugs were sparking when taken out, so why were they not sparking when in the cylinder?

no more lost sleep, few, looking forward to getting stuck in tomorrow!

sometimes just needs a different pair of eyes

Ain't that what I said it was??!?!?!
Congrats

Spark plugs that will spark in free air won't necessarily spark when under compression and in an air:fuel mixture. The higher the compression ratio the harder it is for sparks to work.....

Plugs may appear to be sparking OK when laid on an earth on the engine when cranking but when put under the sort of pressures that build up in a cylinder the spark can be extinguished or instaed of jumping the gap can track out down the insulator with the same result. You can sometimes see the track marks , look like a fine pencil line . Cleaning modern plugs is often a waste of time .

nice car alex .... was happy to help out mate

Glad to hear you got it sorted and you don't need the number for the samaritans any more!!

All the best with the rest of the tuning!

very rich mixtures can bugger plugs. Once they start to track down the insulator the spark will allways look for the easiest path to travell.

I would replace all four. And again when you get it maped.

WELL DONE THOSE MEN. Told you it'd be rich as a bitch still though.

I was really hoping this was good news from you, its good to hear a mega squirt breakthrough

We've had that problem aswell, the car's all running fine and then suddenly (usually the next time you get it out) it sounds like a Subaru!

The plugs spark fine out of the engine but break down under compression.. all of ours that have done this I would describe the center core as broken. If you twist the nipple on the end of the plug when its tight it still moves a tiny little bit either way.

I've spoken to technical people from NGK and nobody seems to be able to give a good answer as to whats caused it, Think i've got Sierra injection Bosch plugs in at the moment as they are a different heat rating to the carb'd plugs.

I've posted on here about it before under something like "whats destroying my NGK-R's"

Glad you've found the major problem anyway, good luck with the rest!

So come on then that man - Post the
"I've got it running video and Audio" on YouTube..........

Well done it;s worth the grief these beasties give us.

[Edited on 20/202/09 by mad4x4]

Well done!

I don't understand what had changed over Christmas that it would have suddenly stopped working but oh well!

Cheers,
James