When I emailed everyone in the Miata Club with what happened with the car on Tuesday, Jim Creer emailed back and said it was a plug wire. So on Wednesday morning before driving to work I unhooked each plug wire and reseated them. The drive to work was just like the drive home, underpowered, with some surging, so at work I called a tow truck and had the Miata taken to Rader.
This morning I called at around 10 AM and was informed that she had just got my paperwork and the technician couldn’t find anything wrong with the car. Riiight. Donna and I took a half day off and went over at noon to pick up the car. The cynical side of me thinking that they haven’t fixed anything or if it is running right now, they fixed something and just don’t want to tell me. As soon as I get in the car I know it is fine, so off we go home.
At the Miata Club meeting tonight I was explaining this all to the gathered throng and Rudy says, “When was the last time you changed the fuel filter?” I guess it was a couple years ago at the 90K service. He explains something about a sock getting plugged, all very plausible considering that it started after a kinda hard left turn. Maybe it was cleared by the angle of being hauled up onto the flatbed tow truck. No matter, everything is fine now.
On the way home from the meeting we stopped at Bi-Lo for some OJ for tomorrow’s breakfast. When we started to leave the parking lot the car stalled. I though, gee, I didn’t think I engaged the clutch that badly. The car would not restart. Donna and I (with the help of a nice man) pushed it back into a parking spot. As Donna went off to call her mother to come get us, I remembered what Jim had said as we ate dinner, he said that I needed to check both ends of the plug wire. Sure enough the wire on the far right of the coil pack (#3 I think) came off too easy. There wasn’t any metal plug under the boot, it was still in the coil, the wire was broke.
Tomorrow I guess I’ll be buying a new set of plug wires. Hope that fixes it. I can understand one broken wire causing the low power with some surging, but not starting at all?
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