Irish Mini Owners Club

hey lads was driving my 97 spi yesterday and all of a sudden she start running on 3 cylinders, determined the cause to be no fuel going into the cylinder closest to the fan. Any ideas to what caused this or how to fix it? cheers.

i'm not saying you are wrong.. but how did you determine that it was a fuel problem and that its #1 cylinder?

if its deffo not electrical, then check your valve clearances also do a compression test on the cylinders.

after testing all spark leads for a spark, replaced the one that wasn't sparking (no.1) car still wasn't running right. then thought that the plug was gone, took out the no.1 plug and tested it for a spark, was sparking fine, took out no.2 for comparison, tested compression, cylinder no.2 was wet looking and a bit black, no.1 however was bone dry and shiny

1] fuel system:
try listening to the injector when the engine is running.. (not easy, i know) listen for even, regular activation of the injector - looking to see if the injector is triggering for #1 cylinder

2] mechanical:
check the valve clearances - looking for intake suction, although that might have shown up on the compression test: what are the numbers for the compression test you did?

3] other:
if the spark is weak it will fire ok in the "air" but will fail wont fire/ignite when in the cylinder. assuming also the spark gaps are ok - look to see if there is much corrosion or tracking in the distro-cap

Give Paul Kelly a ring, he's a wizard!

Buy a civic!!!

As your car is a '97 SPi I assumn its a jap import which is a combination of MPi block and single injector. Unlike the MPi the SPi doesn't have a camshaft sensor only a crankshaft sensor so the chances of the injector not firing on only one cylinder are slim and since the engine is running the injector is proberbly ok. Is it possable that the engine is droping onto 2 cylinders which would subjest that half the coilpack may be failing. Did this come out of the blue or was there any work carried out on the car recintly?
If the fault is only on one cylinder it is proberbly mecanical if its not the sparkplug or lead.

or failing that and if it sounds and runs noticeably different it might be a head gasket failure?

it came back from the mechanic a week ago after having some work done regards nct stuff, yea I was just driving down the road and all of a sudden she splutters and dies???

What work was carried out on it?
Can you drive the car easy or does it always lose power?

it got a new air filter, oil filter, oil change, new fuses, new tappets, rocker cover sealed, and dipetane ran through
its near undrivable, couldn't get it above 30km/h near no power at all

Timing could be way off

car was driving absolutely perfect up until it happened, went to Mullingar and back and didn't miss a beat

How much petrol in he tank? Not running on too much dipetane?
"NewTappets" I presume means the tappets were checked and adjusted, they may not have been tightened properly, check them again?
"New fuses" I think your car is fitted with the blade fuses so can't see any reason for this unless there were electrical issues beforehand?
Timming is controlled by ECU so doubt if its out.
Check the vacumn pipe between the manifold and ECU.The 4 rubber elbows at the ends must be 100%.

the dipetane has all been run out of the tank by now, the fuses had got damp due to the car been sitting before I bought it, on a side note, it will not start with the spark lead from cylinder 1 or 4 off

1 and 4 are feed from the same side of the coil pack so if the other half of the pack has failed you are proberbly running on two cylinders and when you remove 1 or 4 your trying to start on one cylinder.

how would I determine if the coil pack is at fault? sorry for all the questions, noob here

You need to measure the resistance of the primary and secondary windings with a multimeter set to ohms.There is a plug on the coilpack with one brown and 2 white cables .Note the location of the brown cable and remove the plug. On the coilpack using the pin that was connected to the brown cable as the common measure the resistance between it and the other two pins. They should be the same around 0.4 to 0.6 ohms.Then remove the sparkplug leads and measure resistance between the outputs. You should get a two readings of about 1200ohms