D1 does not like water

[jhelton001]

I have a problem with my 97 D1. It runs fine and gets 14-15 MPG. It is smooth and makes good power. Now for the problem if it rains or gets wet it will idle fine but it will not rev and does nothing but stumble and miss. Yesterday was the first time it has happened in a long time because we have not had rain in months. I started it up all was fine moved it to the location I was going to wash it. I parked and washed it (not under the hood) went to move it back and could not even make it up my driveway. I let it sit overnight and had slight miss this morning till it lost all power 1/8 of a mile from home. I had to park it and catch a ride. 2 hours later I went back and it ran like a champ. Something is getting wet. I looked @ ECU it looked dry. This is not a fuel pump problem I checked pressure. Plug wires are new and it has new plugs when it was dooing this there was no arcing from wires.

 

[edthediscoman]

Check the rotor cap for fine hairline cracks....maybe?

 

[bmn1965]

Spray down the motor with a fine mist of water in the dark it will look like a light show if you have any bad plug wires but check the cap too.

 

[FIVESPDDISCO]

no cap on a 97 D1 may bad gems ? just a guess i would have said bad wirers

 

[garrett]

97 is coils. could be a bad coil. there are 4. you can actually buy seperate coils from ACDelco. about $90 each.

 

[jhelton001]

I was thought wires also but they were dry as a bone I just washed the outeside of the truck. I did mist wires and all was good.

 

[jhelton001]

How would you check coils?

 

[LuisC]

When mine did that, investigation turned up a bad crank sensor. It's located on the back of the block behind the flex plate. Hard see, even harder to reach.

Luis C

 

[jhelton001]

Luis, with bad crank sensor did your truck idle? I haven't had a no start condition even when I could not go over 10MPH. How did you test crank sensor?

 

[garrett]

a bad or slightly bent sensor will cause the truck to stumble really bad and give the impression of bad wires, coils, etc.

regarding coils. easiest way for me was to just swap them out. but usually you get a code with a bad one. a misfire code.

 

[jhelton001]

It did it today in the rain.

This past weekend I drove 400 miles in the dry and got 16.5 MPG and ran perfect. Today I had to go out in the rain. At first all was ok but then I had to go through water 2'' deep as soon as I hit the water truck started to miss and lost all power. Only thing I could do was go idle speed to a friend’s house if you give it gas it would misfire, backfire, and backfire into intake. I pulled into his garage and popped the hood there was no water in the engine bay. ECU was dry, plug wires were dry, and coils were dry. I let the truck idle for 45 min and whatever was wet dried out and truck had full power and I drove home.

Does this sound like the crank sensor could be the problem?

 

[bkortman]

It is almost certainly one of the coil packs! One of them is bad or the connector to one of them is bad. We have had this twice on our 96 on two different coil packs.

 

[ChrismonDA]

On mine the spare fuse cover was gone and water would get into the fuses. After it dried ran fine.

 

[sdavis69]

Had a similar/identical problem on my 96 Disco a couple years ago. Ran great in dry weather, but if driving in rain or even mist, it would begin to stumble and cough to the point that I'd have to get off the road to let it dry out. Car washes were particularly nasty to the condition. Ultimately, I traced it down to a very small crack on one of the coils (up on the top where my #3 plug wire boot slips over the coil). Of course, it was in the back, facing windshield, where you couldn't see it. Finally saw a spark from the area at night with the hood open. At that time, I wasn't aware of individual coils being available (as Garret noted) and I couldn't afford the whole pack, so I fixed it myself by grinding out the crack to its root with a Dremmel tool and refilling/moulding the top to its original shape with JB Weld (yeah.. its non-conductive). I used a lubed-up McDonalds straw to keep the ID to spec and to prevent the epoxy from creeping in. Haven't had a problem in this area since.

 

[apg]

Had the very same gremlin on my '96 for a while. A bit of splash on an otherwise sunny day and the damn thing couldn't get out of its own way. Even had it dragged into the dealer a time or three (when it was still under warranty....). Of course, by the time it got there, all was well. No codes thrown and of course the techs couldn't find anything amiss. I cleaned up all the connections to the under-bonnet 'brain' and it gets regular doses of WD-40.

Mind you, that is the only thing I use WD-40 for these days: it's namesake - wire (or water) drying. The gremlin has been kept at bay for five years now....

Interesting to see if "Nigel's Disease" makes an appearance....

 

[jhelton001]

Problem fixed. Crank sensor wires have small heat cracks, so when wires got wet it would send a crazy signal to the ECU causing problems above. I discovered this problem last night just in time for the tropical storm. It was a down poor this morning and it did not miss a beat.