Somebody help

#1

Ok so the car has been doing this all season and swapping ECU’s and AFM’s normally seems to make it disappear for a short period of time. However on Sunday this was not the case. The car sputtered almost constantly as if I was flipping the ignition on and off. I checked the ignition switch, the main power shut off, the fusable link from the battery and the grounds that I knew of. I have no idea what it is. I would really appreciate any and all help. Here’s a video of what it is doing.

p.s. the funny part is the race results said I came in last place in the race 3 laps down from the leader. I actually came in 8th and was on the lead lap. I’m guessing that the main power has to be cutting completely off in order to kill the power to the transponder.

http://vimeo.com/6257380

#2

I’d give Jim Levie a call. He’s had a lot of experienced fighting electrical gremlins. Have a notepad by the phone.

#3

Sounds like the symptoms I had and eventually traced it to my kill switch; a longacre non-removable “key” type. Switch was about 4 years old.

After I stumbled on it, a new switch immediately solved the cutout.

Mine also would sometimes refuse to start. The car would turn over, coil had power, but no spark. Other times, it would start fine but cutout randomly. I did a quick test at VIR by putting both low-tension leads onto the same terminal for a session. It was no longer a proper kill-switch of course, but it did eliminate the cutout and told me that was the problem.

#4

Mike, replace the kill switch and get the best (Longacre gets my vote…for now. Although Chuck had problems with his…) that you can find.

No, I didn’t watch the video.The total power failure tells the story. Been there , done that.

RP

#5

Thanks guys. The killswitch is brand new…so i’m guessing there is a continuity problem surrounding the kill switch. I had the same problem as chuck did with the car not staring and that was the reason for replacing the switch. I appreciate guys I think you pushed me in the right direction. Sounds like I need to play around with the killswitch some more.

#6

Two electrical issues I’ve had in the past on my car which both caused intermittent starting issues (no running problems though fortunately for me… unfortunately for my competitors) were:

  1. Cheater push button ignition switch (Longacre). Replaced, everything worked great. This sucked because it caused completely sporadic starting issues with no way of troubleshooting (once I got the test light, car would start) and no pattern (hot, cold, full charge battery, etc).

  2. Electrical cable running from the battery to the junction block. On my car, there were two lines from the factory (one fat and one skinny). Removed the skinny one, jumped it all together at the junction block, everything then worked fine.

#7

for others starting out, using the skinny wire and the big wire together is the easiest way to wire a kill switch. Search for threads about this.

The car cranking without catching is a symptom of the skinny wire being interrupted somewhere.
bruce

TheRedBaron wrote:

[quote]

  1. Electrical cable running from the battery to the junction block. On my car, there were two lines from the factory (one fat and one skinny). Removed the skinny one, jumped it all together at the junction block, everything then worked fine.[/quote]
#8

I had a similar problem with my car. After replacing a whole list of parts I figured it out on the grid at Cal Speedway when my car refused to start. It was my main relay. The cheapest, simplest part I never thought to look at. My car would cut out at high rpms and sometimes refuse to start after the session on the track. I think the heat in the engine compartment after a session would heat up the relay and then would not work. May not be your problem but may help others looking for electrical problems.

#9

I had the same problem on Saturday and it turned out to be a bad plug wire. I got lucky finding that one quickly and was fine on Sunday.