Subarule Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 I had the exact same thing. Exactly. It drove me crazy and frustrated me no end. I have a carbed 1.8L '86 wagon. For me it was a vacuum leak. Finally traced down the leak, fixed, and car has run like a champ ever since. Still on the original not-rebuilt carb. I do run Marvel Mystery Oil through the gas tank with every fill-up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subarule Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 welcome to the club. My loyale has that same dead pedal feel. Mine's a manual, but I know the symptom. You can be moving along, fairly slow, rpm's round 1.5k, floor the car, and it just increases intake noise. The car slowly picks up speed, till about 2.5-3k when the power comes on. It friggin sucks, cause the car will bogg and stall rather than spinning its tires when backing and filling in deep snow. I'm solving my problem with an EJ22, but I am curious about the real cause. When mine used to run like that I called it "entering The Dead Zone". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subarule Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 actually... now that I hear more about it, I think my GL does the same thing when it's cold. usually in second gear, around 1500 rpms, I have to be light on the pedal to make it accelerate. I have a new rotor and cap, the plugs and wires are fine. I'm thinking I might have a small intake manifold leak, due to some other problems I've been having (heater vents changing under load). wonder if that has anything to do with it My heater/AC would make a sucking noise when I turned one or the other on. Fixed my vacuum leak and that went away along with that gas pedal hesitation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dude Abides Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 My 88 DL does the same thing. I just replaced the cap and rotor plugs and wires. Still there Heres what people have told me to check, i also have the iratic idleing problem as well. Check IAC Valve Check Coolant Temp Sensor Check TPS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coroboto Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 How do you go about finding a vaaccum leak? Up by the intake manifold area? The brass diaphram looking things? No o2 sensor replacement and things worked because it was related to a vaccum line leak? The actual line itself? Seperate question here. When people say things happened on this site did they do the work or am I barking up the wrong tree asking for advice? I am thinking about paying someone to find this leak of vaccum because I know nothing about that. How much could it be to find a vaccum leak? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subarule Posted July 28, 2009 Share Posted July 28, 2009 How do you go about finding a vaaccum leak?Up by the intake manifold area? The brass diaphram looking things? No o2 sensor replacement and things worked because it was related to a vaccum line leak? The actual line itself? Seperate question here. When people say things happened on this site did they do the work or am I barking up the wrong tree asking for advice? I am thinking about paying someone to find this leak of vaccum because I know nothing about that. How much could it be to find a vaccum leak? My car (year & model) does not have an O2 sensor. Really, it doesn't. I had bought anew one to replace the orginal one just this year and it turns out there isn't one to replace. And my vacuum leak was found by my mechanic at the shop I use. I don't know exactly what was done to fix the leak but it was either a fitting or a hose or both. But I had taken it in specifically to have the car checked for vac leaks. Wherever the leak was it was related to what draws vacuum to the HVAC blower. But keep in mind that my car is only a simple, non-feedback carbed model. No FI. As for how much it would cost a licensed shop to find yours, I imagine it would be about an hour's worth of whatever their labor rate per hour is, for probably an hour or so worth of diagnosing and then whatever replacement hose or fitting was required. It was well worth it to get rid of that annoying (and dangerous) hesitation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coroboto Posted September 8, 2009 Share Posted September 8, 2009 The mechanic read the codes my car was sending and apparently my distributor is grounded for the high end of something. Well I am replacing the distributor at four this afternoon. I will post results... Apparently I still may have to replace the ECM I tried the whole buying a new car...totalled that car in under a month(93legacy LS). Gonna swap the engines though so that should be nice... A 2.2 liter mpfi in A legacy...yeAh:banana: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zilejanis Posted September 9, 2009 Share Posted September 9, 2009 To find any vacuum leak in inlet I allow engine to run iddle and work around all possible leak areas (manifold ,carb gaskets.hoses...) with brush wet with gasoline. Also works solvent sprayers- carb cleaners. If engine sucks gasoline from yoyr brush instead of clear air, idle rpm will change. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subarule Posted September 15, 2009 Share Posted September 15, 2009 I had that same problem for a long time - years. It was very annoying and sometimes even scary. My ride is an '86 carbed, non-feedback, 5-spd., 4WD, 1.8L wagon. The problem got fixed by replacing all the vacuum hoses. Somewhere there was a leak. Since all the vac hoses were pretty much the same age (original), I decided that it would be best to replace them all at once rather than piecemeal. And the connections would be new & tight as well. My car has not done that dead-spot/gasp/flatten-out thing since I got the new hoses. I love it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coroboto Posted September 18, 2009 Share Posted September 18, 2009 Ok so I meant to say that: the mechanic read the codes my car was sending when warmed and unable to re-start. The problem was that the distributor and when warmed it would send a ground to the ECM. I replaced the distributor (~200$) and now the thing purrs like a kitten. So the problem was a warn out distributor terminal and I replaced the part and now I am happy... The real problem I have now is the mess I made of the car I bought... found the ea to ej swap section on this site. I am considering two things now. 1. fix front end clip on jacked front end of 93 LS legacy. Engine is good and so is transaxle. 2. Put engine into 92 loyale. Thanks for your help all. Peace Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjiblong Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 Bingo! Wow, that is great to hear someone describe the problem exactly. Of course, the question is still open as to what causes this phenomenon...the most obvious seems to be something in the fuel delivery system... I have the same problem and I hope to find that the TPS might be bad.... can a can come from the factory like that?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MTSuby Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 I guess I'm resurrecting an old thread here, but since this seems like such a common problem...It helped me when I searched for the same issue, so I figured I'd put my experience in. I have a new to me 93 Loyale that had hesitation just every once in a while when I first bought it. Just sometimes in the morning when it was still cold. That was about a month ago. Just this week, all of a sudden one day, it got BAD. Every time I first started the car, the hesitation when I'd first accelerate was bad. To the point where the car was bucking, and yes, it was dangerous trying to pull out into traffic. The car sounded terrible even when it was driving ok, and there was a lot of popping coming out of the tailpipe. I bought plugs, rotor, disty cap, and wires. The wires weren't in, they'll be here in the morning, but I went ahead and changed out the plugs, cap and rotor anyways figuring I'll do the wires tomorrow. Problem solved. Was probably the plugs, since the rotor and cap looked fine to me, but the wires look pretty old, so I'm glad I got new ones anyways. But anyway, this happened suddenly, pretty much out of nowhere one day. Basic tuneup seems to have completely solved it. So there are probably a few different causes, but a simple tuneup may very well solve it for people. I spent just under $60 at the parts store (all NGK). Of course if it was just the plugs, that would have only cost me about $9....but I'm glad I did all the stuff, just because it's a new to me car so that's some peace of mind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoobiedubie Posted August 26, 2012 Share Posted August 26, 2012 If the distributor has a pair of horizontal plates that have ball bearings between the two, and the upper plate is connected to the vacuum mechanism as well as the advancing electronics, like the 85 and 86's, the upper plate gets sticky. This stickiness simulates a vacuum hose leak because the upper plate gets hung up. The upper plate controls the advance of the engine firing. The stickiness is due to either corrosion of the ball bearings, wear on either of the two plates, or dirt getting packed into the bearing contact path. The result of stickiness is a lack of smoothness in the advance of the engine. Suddenly, it will jump the advance forward, after the upper plate was hung up on the lower fixed plate. The ball bearings can be easily replaced after removing the plates. The plates can be scraped for dirt. Grease can be added to improve the smoothness. If you have rough grooves in either plate, then the plates are toast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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