Breakdown Information
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Driveline: 1991 Chevrolet P30 454
1992 Fleetwood Southwind
~75k miles
Symptoms: Hard crank, acted flooded, caught with belch of black smoke, died upon putting it in gear.
Cause: Fault water temp sensor.
Outcome: Back to normal.
Details:
Evidence of rich running, based on soot at tailpipe, puff of black smoke on start up. But ran fine for 400+ miles from Atlanta down to Florida. Near end of trip, started sputtering and hesitating from a start. Idle high, around 2,000 rpm.
Rig would not re-start after backing into campsite. Acted flooded. Held down accelerator, engine would fire with huge clouds of black smoke, idle high, but as soon as I put it in gear, it would die.
Cooled off, next morning was able to start and drive to Wal-mart for supplies, but wouldn't re-start in the parking lot. Same acting flooded, black smoke, high idle, died in gear. Called mechanic.
Replaced distributor cap, rotor, and fuel filter. Battery was also very weak, and it was changed at this time. Same symptoms.
Ignition checked out okay, the computer was just dumping too much fuel. Mechanic hooked up a scanner. It gave no error codes, but he noticed the water temp sensor was reading 5 deg. F. (In Florida in August!) Apparently that was causing engine to run too rich.
Replaced sensor, fire right up, idle back in normal range, but "lumpy." Plugs were fouled from all of the rich running. Changed them, and pulled O2 sensor and wiped it clean (it was new) and idle smoothed out. Ran perfectly the 400+ miles back to Atlanta.
1992 Fleetwood Southwind
~75k miles
Symptoms: Hard crank, acted flooded, caught with belch of black smoke, died upon putting it in gear.
Cause: Fault water temp sensor.
Outcome: Back to normal.
Details:
Evidence of rich running, based on soot at tailpipe, puff of black smoke on start up. But ran fine for 400+ miles from Atlanta down to Florida. Near end of trip, started sputtering and hesitating from a start. Idle high, around 2,000 rpm.
Rig would not re-start after backing into campsite. Acted flooded. Held down accelerator, engine would fire with huge clouds of black smoke, idle high, but as soon as I put it in gear, it would die.
Cooled off, next morning was able to start and drive to Wal-mart for supplies, but wouldn't re-start in the parking lot. Same acting flooded, black smoke, high idle, died in gear. Called mechanic.
Replaced distributor cap, rotor, and fuel filter. Battery was also very weak, and it was changed at this time. Same symptoms.
Ignition checked out okay, the computer was just dumping too much fuel. Mechanic hooked up a scanner. It gave no error codes, but he noticed the water temp sensor was reading 5 deg. F. (In Florida in August!) Apparently that was causing engine to run too rich.
Replaced sensor, fire right up, idle back in normal range, but "lumpy." Plugs were fouled from all of the rich running. Changed them, and pulled O2 sensor and wiped it clean (it was new) and idle smoothed out. Ran perfectly the 400+ miles back to Atlanta.
