stalling

[samvlcal]

hi all

having a problem with my vl, it keeps stalling. Its an automatic so its not me! On saturday i degreased my motor and cleaned it with a high pressure hose. I was careful to avoid spraying the electrical bits and pieces. The car started and ran fine until it stalled. I have since replaced the battery and ignition coil but the problem continues to happen, that is, the car starts and drives but stalls shortly after and will not start again until it cools right down. The RAA bloke found condensation in the distributor cap and says the problem is water in the electrics which is sending the wrong message to the ECU. The water could be anywhere he said! A friend thinks i need the distributor overhauled because when it gets hot it fails. Has anyone seen something like this before? More importantly does anyone know how much it will cost?

[VL-187]

i had the same problem with my old vl.....think it ended up bein the injectors, 2 needed replacing. maybe check if they r leaking.

[bangers]

if you have water in the dizzy then you need to pull it out and pull the guts out and let it all dry. Change the CAS while you're there. also check the contacts in the plug on top of the dizzy as when they get moisture in it it corrodes. change the plug as well.

[Holdfast]

Mmm, bad news but probably easy to fix. As "bangers" said probably water inside the distributor right down even into the guts of it.

I cleaned my engine in the same way many months ago and ended up with all sorts of problems.

You may find that in addition to what bangers said the water can get into the guts via a poor sealing gasket where the distributor cap fits onto the actual metal distributor housing. Mine was cracked so I replaced it (expensive too for an original).

Anyway, eventually the water got down into the bearing in the distributor and stuffed it. The rusty bearing put crap all over the CAS etc and gave the Crank Angle Sensor (CAS) interupted signals all kinds of weird and wonderful readings back down to the computer.

If your car goes ok, then chugs along, gets really hot and then dies and then when you let it cool down completely and then it drives for a couple of K and dies again then you'll need to overhaul all the distributor. But don't go overboard I'm talkin about checking that the guts of the distributor is all nice and clean. It only takes about 15 minutes to clean it well so maybe it's an idea that might get you going

Once you take the distibutor cap off, just use some tape and tape it out of the way so you can remove the metal cover plate covering the inner bits of the distributor. Once you take that cover plate off, if it looks full-on yuk and there's heaps of gunk around the steel slotted plate that rotates through the CAS then all that needs to be cleaned off.

Check all the connections are tight and pay a lot of attention to cleanliness and double check there's no water anywhere in the distributor. If you haven't got a repair manual then your local library will and it's a good idea to read all about the distributor and the CAS to understand how this can affect the computer.

Water can also get into the distributor where the Crank Angle Sensor electrical plug connection comes out of the distributor metal casing (unlikely but worth checking)

And, don't forget the distibutor gasket, it's worth replacing with a new one.

samvlcal, There's many other likely scenarios and my comments are just from what has actually happended with my VL. I went through changing heaps of electrical components but in the end it was just water and dirt that caused the problems. You'll get there, but just have a crack at the non expensive basic scenarios first.