as much as I heard not to do this mod I still did for some odd reason. Well I installed them 3 days ago and now the car is acting up. I dont know if whats going on here has any relation to what I did with the pulleys but things are kinda screwy.

The problem is that I can barely give the car any gas. when I do the car jerks and hesitates. No load can be put on the engine past about 1500 RPMs, once you do the car really struggles and begins to make this popping sound almost as if it is backfiring. It feels as if something is slipping. It is still driveable this all happened on the way home, I got it up to about 30mph but it really really struggles.

When idling in neutral or park I can rev the engine all I want and nothing is struggling. The new belt I put on is not slipping and everything seems to be running fine with the pulleys.

So is this an immediate after affect of changing the pulleys? or do I just have bad luck that
when I try to improve the car something else goes wrong
Transmission?
Stuck Valve?
Timming?
Electrical Problem?

will switching the alternator pulley back to the stock one do anything ?

The car has 65,000 miles on it and I havent taken it in for a tune up or anything since I have had it.

Any suggestions will be very much appreciated.

Thanks
Jason

 

are you sure you put the right pulley on the right components. if you put the wrong pulley on the crank it would cause everything to be out of whack, thereby when you put load on it (aka the transmission in gear) she would bog. frankly i would take the pullies off, replace them with the stock ones, and take the underdrives and throw them as far as possible. they cause nothing but problems for third-gens.

 

yeah, I am sure that the right pulleys went in the right place. I think it would be quite hard to put a crank pulley on an alternator. If I dont get any other suggestions I will put them back to stock, I just dont know if this problem is related to the pulleys or not.

 

no it's not related to your new pulleys.

 

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What he said.

The only things that changing the pulleys will effect are the power steering, water pump, alt., and A/C if you have it.

Is it possible that you may have bumped a vacuum line off? Or forgot to hook one back up? That's kind of what it sounds like from what you've said is wrong.

The other cause may be the timing. Did you unhook it at all? Or it could be in need of a tune up (like you mentioned).

9 times out of 10 a bog (or no acceleration at all) is caused from running too lean. A vacuum leak can cause this. The timing not advancing will also give the same feeling as a bog. Check them both and see what happens.

Let us know.

AJ

 

I didnt fiddle with anything that I didnt need to. Didnt unhook the timing or touch any vaccum lines. The only time I touched any vaccum lines is when I had to plug the vaccum line to the thermac device to install the open element, but that was done a long time ago. All I touched was the pulleys this time. The car ran fine for three days with them on then this all of a sudden happened. I will take a look around and see if anything got bumped loose somehow.

Maybe when I pulled off the stock crank pulley I screwed up something on the inside? I didnt get any check engine lights or anything. I will get back to you and tell you what I can find

 

Jason,

As much as underdrive sheaves are a problem on street cars, they shouldn't have caused the kind of issues you are experiencing. More likely it was something else that occurred related to the installation or just coincidence.

However, with 65,000 miles and not so much as a new set of plugs, why would anyone spend the time on changing sheaves? My first priority would be a full service. Start with a fresh set of REAL spark plugs, i.e., NOT the "designer" plugs like ShìtFires or **** +4s or some crap like that. Stick with AC or Champion copper cored, single side electrode, standard heat range plugs. It won't make a lot of difference wheter they are platinums, except in your wallet.

When changing the plugs, remove, clean, inspect, and meter every plug wire for resistance. Replace any wire that has more than 300 ohms per foot or so.

As long as the wires are off, remove the distributor cap and rotor. Throw them as far as you can so you never see them again. Replace them with a good quality set that has GRP molding and solid brass contacts. That doesn't have to be anything special, so you don't have to find a Jacobs or Accel cap and rotor. Just get the top end replacement parts, like Standard Plus/Blue Streak, Wells/Conrad Gold Line, or Niehoff. The others are only the same thing with a higher price tag.

While the distributor is open, closely inspect the pickup reluctor and coil. Any heavy rusting on the reluctor should be removed. Check the reluctor closely for signs of cracking. Inspect the pickup coil for signs of heating, insulation damage, and cracking. Meter the pickup coil resistance. You should get a range of 500-1,500 ohms. 850 is about dead-on for a new coil. You should also test the resistance from the coil leads to a good ground. There should be no reading on the highest resistance scale (megohms). Any variation from those parameters can mean the pickup coil is on it's way out. While you're in there with the meter, test the filter capacitor in the base of the distributor as well.

Check the connectors on the HEI switching module, and loosen then tighten the mounting screws to clean off the ground path for the module.

Once that is done, the ignition system should be a little more reliable, and you can move on to cleaning the throttle body and checking the IAC operation and TPS settings.

When you're finished, you should have spent less money than you did for your underdrive set, and should get a helluva lot more benefit.

And since the car has that much mileage with no service, you might consider a replacement O² sensor while you're under the hood. The $25 you'll spend could be saved in fuel costs in the first few thousand miles.

 

Thanks for the suggestion Vader sounds like thats what needs to happen soon anyway. I haven't had time to check everything as you said. But I needed to drive to work today and when the engine was cold it didnt bog like it was when at operating temperature the other day. As the engine slowly warmed up while I was driving the bogging became more distinct. Just tryin to give a little more information to see if this would spark anyones brain on whats going on here.

Thanks
Jason

 

Changed the fuel filter lately?
Those symptoms sound just like what my Fuel inj'ed truck eng was doing when the filter clogged.
Pull it off. Take it outside, drain the fuel from it, and blow thru it. You should be able to blow thru it very easily.

Fuel pump could be weak, but check the filter first.

 

Nope not the fuel filter I just did that a while ago. Whats going on here is differernt. When the fuel filter was clogged the RPMS would go up but it would take forever to get in gear (it had no acceleration), it was very hesitant. What was happening here is that the car would jerk and lerch and make this backfiring sound from the intake. It really felt as if something was slipping. ( hard to describe)

Well I decided to to put some mystery oil in the engine and this has temporarily solved my problem. The car is still slow (it is an RS) But no more unwanted sounds or movements from the car. It seems normal to me now, but still a little sluggish. I am still very intersted on what was going on here, I definetly want to get it fixed wahtever was causing this to happen.

Could I have had a sticking valve?

 

You can hook a vacuum gauge to the intake manifold.
The reading should be nice and steady with a stock eng.
If the vacuum gauge needle is jumping all over the place, your valves are sticking.

 

Tune up. (See Vader's Post)
TPS sensor, and CTS (Coolant temp sensor) would be the first two things I would look at.