hi folks

i have a mk4 escort cabriolet with a zvh turbo in it.the bottom end is a 1.8 zetec.

my problem is when im driving alond it will somtimes backfire and cut out completely..it will idle for ages with no problems.it varys between instantly doing it to 10-15 miles before it does it.

my first thought was the alternator as it was a duffer so put a new one on and its still doing it.then i thought it could be the pink fuel pump relay but thats a ok.i have done an inspection around the engine bay and everything is tiptop.the only thing i can really point to is that the engine gets hot,really fast(is this normal?)my temp gauge is knackered so its hard to tell the actual temp,althought the fan DOES kick in when its soposed to.if the car is too hot could this cause the backfire and cutting out?slso it does it with out the engine under boost.its running at 0.5-0.6bar of boost.whats that in psi?.lol
any help would be fantastic.
car spec as follows....

t3 turbo
larger actuator(not sure what its off....cossie i think)
rs turbo head
1.8 zee block
piper fast road cam/pully
195 chip
custom 3'' strait through exhaust coupled to a seirra cossie 5'' box.

 

what fuel pump you running ?
Have you had the car setup ?

 

the car has been tuned by castle engineering,who fitted the chip and injectors.its running a rst pump i think.i didnt own the car when all the work was carried out.is there anyway of telling what fuel pump im using?

i looked again at the amal valve and the (c)and(w)where conected as follows....compessor(c) was connected to the actuator and the wastegate(w) was connected to the compressor!the other one is not connected to anything.could this have caused damage?when i reconnected them properly i took it for a short drive and it boosted to over 1 bar(14psi) and didnt cut out.it wanted to boost more but i felt it would have gone BANG.i did however run out of fuel i think?!the fuel pump sounds like it is sucking air out of the tank.a sure sign i rekon of no fuel.lol.my gauge however shows that i have just under a 1/4 of a tank.

the backfiring and cutting out was still happening when i put 20 bucks worth of petrol in her.

 

does it back fire and cut out in a striaght line or when you go round corners?

sometimes the fuel tank used on some conversion cars doesnt have a swirl pot, and this causes fuel starvation around corners?

if it cuts out, will it immediately re start and run ok?

 

no.it does it on the straight and nope it wont start again unless bumped or left for an hour.the rev counter goes mad tho if this helps?!?

 

Sounds like an electrical fault to me? Mine had the same symptoms, on investigation, i found that the amal valve wire had been rubbing the oil feed hose shorting out the wire and piercing the oil feed pipe also. This also caused my rev counter to go mad.

 

that sounds interesting b16cvh,where does your wires go from your amal valve?mine go to the body and +to the coil.is this correct?

 

I have no idea, mine are original to the loom and have never been messed with. As the rev counter runs from the coil, this is a good indication of an electrical fault somewhere involving the coil

 

has this been sorted now? i had this problem as an intemitant fault for a while until it started to happen more frequntly! turned out to be the distributor. banged a sprare one on and its been tip-top for ages!

 

i had a problem like this every now and again it felt like hitting a brick wall and stopped and i found out it was my crank position sensor,