EG6DGK

Hi folks, it all happened yesterday morning while I was on my way to school. Tuesday night I tracked my car at the local go-kart track (they open it to full size cars on Tues) and all was well, made the 50 mile trek home no problem.

Wednesday morning, I was in the fast lane when out of nowhere (no signs of a struggle, no noises leading up to this, nothing) the car began to make a sound similar to an 8-bit car racing video game and began engine braking heavily. I had to swerve it all the way to right lane unfortunately the shoulder was under construction so the EG finally came to a halt in the far right lane. With semis and other cars coming I jumped out of the passenger side and over the construction barriers.

Anywho, I don't have much to go off of because it just seemed all too mysterious. A sudden loss of power noise, heavy engine braking, and as much as I floored it it was to no avail. As soon as CHP pushed me off the fwy I tried cranking the motor and all you get is that primary crank kind of noise. Could I have a faulty ignitor? Or a complete distributor fail? I'm pretty sure it can't be the whole engine has gone south.

edit: Additional engine info- D15B7 purchased used off of Craigslist, recently replaced Thermostat, previous owner claimed 170K miles, valve cover started leaking recently.

Thank you all for your willingness to help! Let me know if I can give you more info, I'm still kind of shaken up from what happened, I pretty much feared for my life lol.

-Joe

zerovandez

iTrader: (1)

This is what happened to me, and yes, I was a dumbass for doing it...

I was racing a another car in my hatch with a B18C, going at about 130mph. The car felt smoother as I was going faster. All was well. But then it died. Motor completely shut down. I was fortunate enough to have a shoulder to pull over on. Opened the hood and the OEM header was bright red hot! I was like how cool lol! I looked for obvious signs like water and oil leaks, a hole in my block, any smoke, and and strange smells. Didn't find any of that. So I had it towed to a friends house. The next morning, I found that the car would crank, just never start. So in panic, I replaced the fuel pump, fuel filter, and distributor, even tried a new main realy. None helped.

At that point I was stumped and nearly 300 miles from home. I figured I was only able to inspect the header side of the motor and the top from opening the hood. So I then jacked up the car to check out the underside, and the oil filter portion of the motor. Again, everything looked okay. But....I put my hand around something feeling really strange and deformed. My hand was around the downpipe portion of the header, where the secondary o2 sensor sits. I realized that this sensor was something I added due to the car being OBD2A. So I looked again, and the connector to the o2 sensor was melted! Looked pretty nasty and looking at it with more detail, I can see that the pins to the sensor was exposed. Two of the pins were melted together. This caused a short to the ECU blowing out the EFI/Main Relay fuse in the under hood fuse box. It's a 15A fuse if I can recall, it's also labeld on the fuse box cover. I kept on replacing the fuse but it kept blowing. I ran new wire, and a new connector and mounted the connector way away from any pipes. No problems since. I paid around 800 for a 50 dollar fix...haha!

So...you should check that EFI/Main Relay fuse under the hood. I might even be using the wrong terminology but you'll find it. If there's not any label, get out your multimeter and start testing all of the fuses. I wouldn't know the reason why yours would get blown, however. If you do find the fuse is blown, your next step is to figure out why it was blown. Good luck.

EG6DGK

Thanks for your reply. Yeah 130-0 must've been pretty sketchy lol, but I won't judge haha. I'll have a look at the fuses and the main relay, I didn't really take those into consideration.