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Technical Woj's turbo project
What an irony 
Just after getting a new MOT for the first time in almost 8 years that I own my Cinq its engine is crippled. Today I messed up, our town was slightly flooded (lakes on the street ca. 20-30cm deep) and I had to swim through this with my car right in the middle of the storm, entered one of the lakes too optimistically . The result is one dead cylinder, I am guessing the lead got wet, and now the spark plug is swimming in fuel. Will see if it gets any better tomorrow, but I already supplied myself with plugs, leads, oil, oil filter, and fuel filter for a small serivce this weekend, because it really badly needs it.
Just after getting a new MOT for the first time in almost 8 years that I own my Cinq its engine is crippled. Today I messed up, our town was slightly flooded (lakes on the street ca. 20-30cm deep) and I had to swim through this with my car right in the middle of the storm, entered one of the lakes too optimistically . The result is one dead cylinder, I am guessing the lead got wet, and now the spark plug is swimming in fuel. Will see if it gets any better tomorrow, but I already supplied myself with plugs, leads, oil, oil filter, and fuel filter for a small serivce this weekend, because it really badly needs it.
uh oh! Hope its ok fella, i shall keep my fingers crossed until the weekend for you
Noooooo just seen this, does that mean no one has a working turbo at the moment. lol
I hope it's just an ignition problem and the poor little fella hasn't had a mouthful of water.
I hope it's just an ignition problem and the poor little fella hasn't had a mouthful of water.
well that sucks all this time you been worrying about it blowing up and it finally breaks going half a mph through a puddle (albeit a big one)
Monster, mine works just fine thanks, just not taxed or insured or MOT'd at for moment.
all this time you been worrying about it blowing up and it finally breaks going half a mph through a puddle (albeit a big one) Monster, mine works just fine thanks, just not taxed or insured or MOT'd at for moment.
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true, but having had it almost completely in pieces its nice to know it runs when you get it back together again
Fixed, it is running fine again. My diagnosis as to what is not working was entirely correct, however, my diagnosis as to what was the core cause was wrong. The coil died, well half died, somewhat strange, I mean it was firing only one plug, or at least it seemed so. Anyhow, replacing it with a spare from from my old 1.1 engie did the trick. I actually suspect that the water was only the final killer, the car had slight problems keeping the AFR on very light loads for the last month or so that I was atributing to driving on an almost empty tank.
There's one primary winding and two secondary's, so one of the secondary's must have failed. If there was only one secondary the spark would always go to the plug with shortest gap (electricity always takes the easiest route). I've had one fail like this too, the water probably finished yours off. The insulation breaking down on these coils and letting moisture in is exactly what makes them fail. Incidently it's also what fries the micro ecu which is why whenever replacing a micro ecu on a sei or punto the coils should always be replaced too.
Anyway glad you've fixed it and it was nothing serious.
It seems I can learn something new everyday
Well you got me thinking so hold on to that thank for now, it would indeed be possible to wire the secondary like this (most likely how you thought it was):
However if that was the case if you pulled either plug lead both cylinders would fail to spark (I need to test this to confirm, but I'm 99% certain on a Cento if you pull one the other continues to fire).
It would be possible to create a fault such as you have with the above system if there was a short between the secondary and ground (or the ground on the primary) close to one plug. This would actually make one plug spark better and one not at all.
My thoughts though, are that the secondary has a ground centre tap effectively making 2 secondary's. This is the assumption I came to when my coil failed like yours.
Now look what you've done, I'm going to have to do some experimentation now.... (Not with an MPI obviously!)
As for the coil faults that have been damaging the micro ecu's (taken from that German info page on repairing micro ecu's I posted ages ago), it has to be a problem involving the primary, possibly a short between the primary and secondary. If the fault was only on the secondary side the two coils are isolated so it shouldn't cause any damage to the ecu. It's most likely that an insulation failure between the two coils causes the high voltage to find its way back to the ecu.
