Author Topic: Halp! 4.2 ABZ engine gradually died. Now dead.  (Read 7232 times)

Offline smurfinator

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Halp! 4.2 ABZ engine gradually died. Now dead.
« on: March 08, 2011, 11:49:04 pm »
This is an emergency as I am supposed to move out of my house today and the VEMS car will not go.  It just got a new engine and ran GREAT for several days while I sorted things.

Today it started running rough, like it was missing a cylinder.  Then it started running like it was on 4 cylinders.  Then it ran like 1 cylinder.  Now it won't start.

All of the fuses are fine.  It ran for 5 years with all of the same wiring unchanged, etc.

Has this happened to anybody before?  I am sort of in a panic due to all of the things I need to do and now this car is totally dead.

It starts on starter fluid, so I know the coils are firing.  I unplugged a couple of random injector plugs and some made no difference in the (rough) running and one that I unplugged caused the engine to die.

This ABZ is running 1.0.73 with dual out COP.

Any ideas?  Please?  This is beyond urgent...
Audi ABZ 4.2 V8 in 1993 90 quattro
TTV 60-2 flywheel and cam sync
firmware: 1.2.20

Smurf blue (BMW Laguna Seca), hence the name!

Offline mattias

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Re: Halp! 4.2 ABZ engine gradually died. Now dead.
« Reply #1 on: March 09, 2011, 12:15:01 am »
First of all. Datalog?

Does it  reek of fuel? One or more blown "old style" injector FETs could be the reason seeing as this is an old ECU, the new FETs are much harder to kill..  but as it runs on starter fluid I don't think this is the problem as the dead state of a blown FET is a short-circuit which would open the injectors and flood the engine.

Dead fuel pump maybe. Any fuel pressure?

Offline smurfinator

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Re: Halp! 4.2 ABZ engine gradually died. Now dead.
« Reply #2 on: March 09, 2011, 12:55:21 am »

Car is too far from electrical outlet and my laptop battery is broken.  It does not reek of fuel but I did smell a little when it refused to start.  Almost seems like just one injector is working.  I can hear the (new) fuel pump running. 

Engine now knocks a lot when I try to fire it on starter fluid.  Normally, with injector fuses out, it would spin well on starter fluid.  It's getting too dark and cold to pull the coils and plugs.

This is a 3.3 board that is about 6 years old.  It is possible that the injectors have clogged?  I think the fuel filter has been been replaced but not recently. 

My fuse block has been known to have loose connections but they have all been checked.  Could a loose connection have fried part of the board?

**>
There are two fuses for the injectors - one per bank of 4 (10A).   When the engine seemed to be running on 3-ish cylinders, I could pull out either of the two injector fuses and the engine would still run the same.  Isn't that odd?
« Last Edit: March 09, 2011, 11:26:50 am by mattias »
Audi ABZ 4.2 V8 in 1993 90 quattro
TTV 60-2 flywheel and cam sync
firmware: 1.2.20

Smurf blue (BMW Laguna Seca), hence the name!

Offline Sprocket

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Re: Halp! 4.2 ABZ engine gradually died. Now dead.
« Reply #3 on: March 09, 2011, 11:05:51 am »
Check the simple things first. If the car has been sat for a while over the winter, check the ground points for corrossion. Also, fuel goes off really quick these days, so if the fuel is likely to be more than a month old, change it for new.


I'm not so sure this one applies, but I found a set of injectors I had cleaned, were all stuck closed when I came to use them, which is apparently a common problem. I'm not so sure if this might be the case with injectors that have not been used for some time with petrol.

Offline mattias

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Re: Halp! 4.2 ABZ engine gradually died. Now dead.
« Reply #4 on: March 09, 2011, 11:59:43 am »
I would have the car towed and dealt with later. See to it that you have a freshly charged battery for the car, a healthy laptop battery and upgrade the software to latest 1.1.x to make it easier to diagnose problems. Now is also a good time to get the board checked out, it's cost effective to send the board back or upgrade/test, unless you assembled it yourself in which case it's more expensive.

Your fuse block problem is not a good sign for injector FETs if you have the flyback wire on the wrong side of it. You should verify the voltage feed to the injectors, your wiring must be off.
Long ago I used fuse blocks that forced you to use blade connectors on the wiring to attach to the fuse block, so that the connection to the fuse was through a second part in the block where the fuse was inserted.
For good reason I now only use fuse blocks where the part that attaches to the fuse is crimped directly to the wires, and I make sure that the wires can't move around much (zip tie, ..) to avoid having the fuse wiggle out and come loose.



If the car/engine has sat for a while, a lot of stuff can happen to the fuel system - what Sprocket said definately applies. I clean injectors regularly and a common problem with injectors that have sat a while, especially with old pintle-type injectors, is that they have "frozen". A short test cycle (sweep rpm/duty) usually wakes them up but the seats are potentially beyond saving and flow can vary a lot, I throw away a lot of injectors.  A race car that sits during the winter should have the injectors removed, WD40/protective oil sprayed into them while held open and then put away during storage.

Offline smurfinator

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Re: Halp! 4.2 ABZ engine gradually died. Now dead. FIXED!
« Reply #5 on: March 10, 2011, 12:08:20 am »
stupidly enough, I cannot afford to have the car towed. :[

However, I DID fix the problem!.  After replacing the fuel rail/injectors with a spare set known to work, I rolled the car closer to an outlet and borrowed an extension cord from the neighbor.

When I opened megatune I got a warning popup that said something like "tables do not match! - this is a serious problem!"

So I re-upped my megatune file and then the car started right up.

Apparently an electrical short caused the ECU to start re-writing it's own tables???  I remember hearing the ECU reset when I was fiddling with the fan relay and this is when the problem started.

This is very odd, however.

Thanks everybody for trying to help.
Audi ABZ 4.2 V8 in 1993 90 quattro
TTV 60-2 flywheel and cam sync
firmware: 1.2.20

Smurf blue (BMW Laguna Seca), hence the name!