Running on 3.....

[Anonymous]

Small prob with my nova (mk-2 1.2i). This prob only occurs when it is raining really hard and im driving on the motorway. What happens is the car is running fine about 80mph/4th gear and the engine will suddenly losse about 30-50% power it will run like this for a few secs but sometimes for a few mins and then it will run fine again, then it will run rough agin at random times throughout the journey.
But like i said it only happens when its really chucking it down. Now im sure when its running rough its only running on 3 cylinders, i think this is due to water been thrown up off the road and getting into the electrical feed to one of the cylinders. Does everyone agree?
Now what i want to know is...has this happened to other peeps, and also is there a common place where water can get into to interupt the current flow to the spark plug. Now the plugs/leads/coil/dizzy cap and ignition amplifier are all less than a year old (<5000miles), so im sure they wont neeed replacing, i just think water is entering the one of the connections between these parts, the question is where?
Or is there a another reason for this prob, or should i be looking at stuff like earth straps and battery power etc??
Any help would be greatly appreciated...the sooner the better....
Great its raining again, what fun it will bve driving home :)

P.S-the car starts 1st time every time no matter what the weather, and i have no other probs with the car.

[Anonymous]

the same happened to me. i just cleaned the inside the dizzy cap sprayed with wd40 same with ht leads & coil used plenty of wd40, been ok ever since (about 3 weeks now)

:D your home is at risk if you do not keep up repayments :D

[Anonymous]

yup its leads, give em a dry out as above

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[Anonymous]

VERY COMMON PROB mate.....had it with my A-reg 1.2L and my Antibes with both 1.2 and 1.3 engines.

I sprayed the leads with damp-start stuff (moisture barrier spray) and it sorted it. (WD40 does basically the same thing).

One interesting point to make though is that your dizzy might be duff......I'm saying this 'cos I did have the same symptoms occasionally on the 1.2 engine in the Antibes in hot dry weather, which turned out to be a duff dizzy.....loose and wobbly internals...not good! Worth checking but probably just the leads being damp.

[Anonymous]

i've sliconed the cap onto the dizzy so it's fully water proof

16v Engine fitting and advice... mail me for a quote :D

[Anonymous]

My GTE does this too..

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies fellas. This is typical, this prob has been going on for weeks, so post a message to try and sort it and a day later ive fixed it!
It was pissing me off last night running on 3 again! So i pulled into a trading estate off the motorway and thought fuck this ive ad enough of this, so i popped the bonnet expecting to see nothing wrong but low and behold the lead to sparkplug 2 was throwing little sparks from the top of the lead (the wider rubber bit before u get to the metal spring bit which sits on the plug).
The only reason i spotted it was cos it was dark, i dont think i would of seen it in daylight. So this morn i changed both the plug and the lead and the cars running like a dream, even on the m62 this morn when it was raining, i was running on 4 again all the way to leeds!!
Doing this seems to have smoothed out erratic idle speed too, it used to move between 500-1000rpm randomly. Now it just sits happily on about 800rpm. :D
Things seem to be looking up with the old nova, im running out of things to fix.... ;)
By the way, i tried the damp start thing and wd40 thing but it didnt solve it, but i dont car now anyways cos its fixed! Sweet :D