88 Stevens Stutter On Light Acceleration /fuel Choice

[danceswiththewolf]

Hope someone has a starter for 10 here. My early 88 turbo has a stutter on light acceleration. Seems worse once the engine is hot. After a bit of enthusiastic driving it gets a lot worse. I have changed spark plugs and HT leads, and I will do a filter change next week. I am wondering if the problem could be choice of fuel. I can't get Super plus unleaded easily ( 50 mile to find a petrol station) so I use standard unleaed, but when I did put super in last week it seemed to get a lot better. Any suggestions anyone? The car has been sitting for 3 years before I bought it, but me previous 88 Turbo did a very similar thing just before I sold it, which is why I'm thinking Fuel.

Many thanks

Kenny

[t70]

Hope someone has a starter for 10 here. My early 88 turbo has a stutter on light acceleration. Seems worse once the engine is hot. After a bit of enthusiastic driving it gets a lot worse. I have changed spark plugs and HT leads, and I will do a filter change next week. I am wondering if the problem could be choice of fuel. I can't get Super plus unleaded easily ( 50 mile to find a petrol station) so I use standard unleaed, but when I did put super in last week it seemed to get a lot better. Any suggestions anyone? The car has been sitting for 3 years before I bought it, but me previous 88 Turbo did a very similar thing just before I sold it, which is why I'm thinking Fuel.

Many thanks

Kenny

Do you have Bosch Fuel injection? If so, I think I can help you tune your system to work with the poor quality fuel...

[danceswiththewolf]

Do you have Bosch Fuel injection? If so, I think I can help you tune your system to work with the poor quality fuel...

Hi,

Sorry for the delay. I've got carbs (early 88 Turbo)

I'm now wondering if it could be fuel starvation.

I accelerated hard for a few miles and if I dipped the clutch the engine stalled. After 20 seconds of coasting down in gear it fine again.

Fuel pump maybe?

Thanks

Kenny

[danceswiththewolf]

Hi!

Engine all fixed!

Despite having all the symtoms of something really serious. - Creamy Yughhh in oil, serious misfire on acceleration etc, it turned out to be 2 pipes running down at back of engine compartment. 1 was fuel pipe which previous owner had replaced and left a kink in, and the other a crank case breather over tightened with a cable tie. Everything pointed to a cylinder head gasket having gone so this is a major relief. Problem found by a renault garage strangely enough, it's an old non franchised dealer in the highlands who still have staff from 30yrs back. The 3 other garages I had taken it to all said cylinder head gasket. Even the combustion by-products / coolant test was positive, apparently again because of the breather. No idea why-but but after the breather pipe was changed and coolant changed the test was clear. The only thing which perhaps could have shown that the cylinder head was OK , was that there was no loss of coolant and the dipstick had scum on it -but too little for it to be a serious amount of water getting into the engine oil. Compression test was OK as well.

Anyway - happy ending.

Thanks again,

Kenny