Hi,
I have had a 92 excel 4 door for a few years now and up untill yesterday it has been running perfectly.

Very suddenly, it started running very rough, as if it were only running on a couple of cylinders.

while the motor was running, i pulled the spark plug leads off one at a time and noted what happened when i removed each plug lead.

It seems that the leftmost two cylinders are not running. I removed the plugs, and they are both clean and dry with no evidence of fouling.

Just to be safe, i replaced all 4 plugs, ignition leads, cap and rotor but unfortunatly this made no difference.

someone suggested it could be a failed "crank angle sensor" but would this not cause problems on all 4 cylinders ?

what should i look at next ?

thanks,
Michael

Well mike I would start with getting the head compression checked. Easy to do if you have the tool for it. Is the car getting spark? Try removing the wires from the dead cylinders and sticking a INSULATED screwdriver into the boot. You should see a spark arc from the wire to the screw driver. If the car is fuel injected you could have a bad injector or 2. Remember all a motor needs to run is air, fuel, and spark. If you drive hard you could have internal damage, but you would hear that. Good luck. Get back to me on the issue. As for the crank positioning sensor.......the car wouldn't run due to the fact that the computer wouldn't know where the crank was at, and would simply stall out.

Yeah I'd suggest doing a compression test as well. It sounds as though maybe your head-gasket has let go - not uncommon in these engines.

hows your ecconomy on 2 cylinders lol :)

HI check to make sure your rocker arm ROD has not broken under valve cover..mine did..only ran on 2 cylinders..wouldn't go over 40 MPH!

so ?

any news ? :whistling:

[B]Hello Mike
I had the same problem..the REAR(back rocker arm ROD breaks on these..its a very common problem and really should be a recall. If you remove the valve cover, you can see the rod cracked in half..most likely its the rear one..you can replace it or alot of people put some stuff ( i cannot recall the name, but it holds the BOLT into place that holds the rocker arm down..the junk yard fixed mine this way..put in the old broken rod arm, sorta super-glued the bolt..been running still cracked for over a year!
GOOD LUCK!