Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

I swaped ECUs and in doing so I may have introduced this problem.

I first removed the existing ECU and fitted my '99p special' - this appimmediately introduced the initial flickering tacho problem.

When I changed back to the original ECU I had hoped that the problem would go away and so I could isolate it to the ECU - 99p lost, no big shakes.

Unfortunately it didn't go away and has got progressively worse, and then morphed in the misfire, since November.

I've removed the ECU since and examined both halves of the 2 connectors and can see no bent, damaged or backed-out pins. I hadn't had any trouble removing the connectors at any point but I had to move the harness to do so. I believe I put it back correctly and didn't trap it under the edge of the sturdy ECU cover

As the problem occurs with both ECU I fear it may be the harness damage.

About the only thing I haven't tried is putting the 99p ECU back in to see if the problem returns to just being a flickering tacho. I know that's a very long shot....

I may be taking up Toby's offer of help.

It could be a failing igniter in the dissy or rust on the connections of the ignition coil causing the flicker, im sure ive also read in the past of people having these symptoms prior to the main relay under the dash giving up the ghost due to dry solder joints.

Geo_coupe wrote:It could be a failing igniter in the dissy or rust on the connections of the ignition coil causing the flicker, im sure ive also read in the past of people having these symptoms prior to the main relay under the dash giving up the ghost due to dry solder joints.

I've already replaced both the coil and the fuel pump relay to no effect but the ignitor is next on my list of possibles.

Thought I was getting somewhere today when my previously problem-free cabby started to 'cough' following my swap-over of ignition amplifier from the flickering 5 door, then I realised I was nearly out of fuel.....

(It was only happening on LH bends and my new tank doesn't have the anti-surge baffle around the fuel pick-up)

Just a thought but what about the the cam sensor, it's a separate unit and it's fitted to the the front of the head on the nearest camshaft, just in front of the distributor.
On the single cam engine it part of the distributor.

Thinking I'll just swap the complete distributor and then this cam sensor to rule them in or out.

1 at a time obviously.....

Oh (mainly) happy days !

I've swapped the whole dizzy from the (very badly running) GTi to the (good) cabby and the problem went with the dizzy.



So it's the dizzy or a part of the dizzy....

Had a look and a poke inside and quickly found that one of the spade connectors to the ignitor was loose, so a quick squeeze with a pair of pliers to make it as tight as the other connectors and hey presto!, it was running nearly perfectly. It revs to 7000rpm, it'll take full throttle in all gears, at all speeds and the only fly in the ointment is that the tacho flickers above 5000rpm.

This is about where I started, so my thoughts are now, just change the whole dizzy assy.

Anybody got a good DOHC dizzy assy available ?

Second-hand dizzy arrived today (thank you ebay), it's on and it seems OK so far.



Now just need to work out which parts of the 'bad' dizzy are the bad ones......

GTiJohn wrote:Second-hand dizzy arrived today (thank you ebay), it's on and it seems OK so far.



Now just need to work out which parts of the 'bad' dizzy are the bad ones......