Looking for help;

Have a 1991 323 sedan, 1.6L Carbie, manual

Car was running fine, then took her on a long jaunt to the country - some rough roads gave her a shake or two. Long story short, she started to stumble over the coming days and weeks, resulting in stalling at speed.

In general, I can run the car for 10-20min without stumbling; then she stumbles gradually and intermittently (no discernible pattern). After 20-30 min likelihood of stalling (while driving) is high. After failure, I can restart the car within 10 - 30 seconds and continue driving, however likelihood of repeated failure remains high.

I thought electrical - replaced the spark plugs, checked leads, replaced ignition coil, and ignition module. Tested the alternator, which was losing voltage, so cleaned her up and checked the regulator - brushes looked good. Retested, and alternator keeps voltage up now. Battery is fine.

The engine runs better than ever, but the issue described remains - will intermittently stumble, leading to failure.

This is my first car project, so painfully explained advice would be appreciated

Thanks!

 

It might be worth having a look at the air intake filter, coud be clogged. Or the Fuel filter may be clogged (think its on the fire wall on the older model 323), its under the back seat on the newer 323 models.

 

Thanks Bob; have just replaced the pickup in the dizzy but still unresolved. Have a fuel filter on the way, so here's hoping! I've got a new air filter in her, so that's all sorted too.

We'll just have to wait and see. After the filter I'm at a loss, but might start playing around with fuel delivery, or clean up the carbie just for kicks.

Thanks

 

It will do no harm cleaning the throttle body with the carb cleaner too. Give the MAF sensor a quick blast of the carb cleaner too. If the air filter was dirty, chances are the MAF sensor is dirty too (this may contain a temp sensor also 2in1). On mine there was a clump of dirt on 1 side of the sensor (side nearest the air filter), easy to remove the sensor, think it has ZL10 written on the top of it, a few quick blasts of carb cleaner and all the dirt came off on mine.

It's also worth having a good look at the breather hoses (have a look at the picture attached), there could be a small split in one of them. You could be getting an air leak. You'll need to take them off to get at the throttle body if you're give that a look.

Hopefully the fuel filter does the trick though!