Misfire on 93 polo 1 litre

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Wed 1 Nov 2006 09:52
Misfire on 93 polo 1 litre - BobL
the car now a fault of appearing to run on three cylinders, espicially when depressing the accelerator. On closer inspection found that when I removed the 2nd spark plug lead (2nd from distributor end of the engine) there was no effect on the overall running. Removing any other lead caused the car to splutter a lot more. I checked the spark from the plug of this second lead and it appears ok. Now thinking the second cylinder has lost compression (I haven`t got a tester) Not sure if this is someting do with the valves/tappetts or someting more serious. If it is could be the end for this car. Not really sure on how to proceed. There is no oil or smoke water coming out the exhaust. Does anyone have any ideas?
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Wed 1 Nov 2006 10:07
Misfire on 93 polo 1 litre - bell boy
try swapping plugs and see if they are oiled up
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Wed 1 Nov 2006 11:02
Misfire on 93 polo 1 litre - Peter D
Lets get rid of the compression question. Go and park nose down, on a hill somewhere out of the way, put the car in first gear no engine ignition on and let the hand brake off. The car should slowly creep forway as it is sat on a compression stroke then lunge forward to the next compression stoke. The car should make even progess between lunges. Simple but effective. Repeat several times for confidence. Now that is probably ok as I suspect a dizzy cap or HT lead failure. You may have the original metal topped HT caps with an internal resistor in them. Measure all the leads for the same resistance 5K form memory it is stamped on the matal cap. swop plugs as already suggested to see if the fault moves with the plug. Report back. Regards Peter
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Wed 1 Nov 2006 11:23
Misfire on 93 polo 1 litre - BobL
Thanks for responses. Forgot to add that the suspect cylinders spark plug is more oiled up but not excessively so. Forgot about mesuring the resistance of the plug leads. I have multimeter so that should be no problem although i guess it will not show if lead is breaking down under load. The distributor cap/leads/rotor arm and spark plugs were all changed a couple of months ago and less than 500 miles ago but that does not make them fault free
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