sometimes its a grin to have experience, that allows you to avoid what was previously a less than pleasant job, because youve learned to avoid the old way of testing , yet still get it done
Bob stopped by with a friend who was driving a 1994 corvette, they stopped by to ask for advise, as the car idled like one cylinder was missing , and the guy driving the car mentioned that ordinarily he would just do a common test where he pulled the ignition wire off each connector on the distributor cap to see how its removal effected the idle, so if he found disconnecting a specific ignition wire had little or no effect he would be fairly certain that cylinder was not firing, or at ;least not firing consistently.
The problem, with the LT1 is the darn OPTI-SPARK makes getting access to the distributor cap a HUGE P.I.T.A. and pulling the plug wires of the plugs , next to hot headers was also a HUGE P.I.T.A., having been that route before, I smiled and said, wait here a second.. I went to my shop and grabbed a infrared temp gun with a lazer pointer and in seconds we were writing the exhaust temps on the headers down on a hand drawn diagram of the engines cylinder lay out, most were in the 470 degree range but #8 was running in the high 260f range, clearly indicating that was the problem cylinder
infrared thermometers are a very useful tool to track down issues with tuning, or mal functioning sensors , without verified facts your guessing.
this is the most consistently accurate I.R temp gun I've used for testing[/img]
http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/e...1100200223789&utm_content=All Extech Products
INFRARED TEMP GUN
having the correct tool and a bit of experience changed what was in the past a rather difficult test where you were certain to get either dirty or burnt to a 3-5 minute test that was very very easy to do with the correct tool, and yes it was still a P.I.T.A. to replace the ignition wire after we traced it back and found it was burnt where it was laying close to the headers but having the correct tool made finding the problems source far easier
Bob stopped by with a friend who was driving a 1994 corvette, they stopped by to ask for advise, as the car idled like one cylinder was missing , and the guy driving the car mentioned that ordinarily he would just do a common test where he pulled the ignition wire off each connector on the distributor cap to see how its removal effected the idle, so if he found disconnecting a specific ignition wire had little or no effect he would be fairly certain that cylinder was not firing, or at ;least not firing consistently.
The problem, with the LT1 is the darn OPTI-SPARK makes getting access to the distributor cap a HUGE P.I.T.A. and pulling the plug wires of the plugs , next to hot headers was also a HUGE P.I.T.A., having been that route before, I smiled and said, wait here a second.. I went to my shop and grabbed a infrared temp gun with a lazer pointer and in seconds we were writing the exhaust temps on the headers down on a hand drawn diagram of the engines cylinder lay out, most were in the 470 degree range but #8 was running in the high 260f range, clearly indicating that was the problem cylinder
infrared thermometers are a very useful tool to track down issues with tuning, or mal functioning sensors , without verified facts your guessing.
this is the most consistently accurate I.R temp gun I've used for testing[/img]
http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/e...1100200223789&utm_content=All Extech Products
INFRARED TEMP GUN
having the correct tool and a bit of experience changed what was in the past a rather difficult test where you were certain to get either dirty or burnt to a 3-5 minute test that was very very easy to do with the correct tool, and yes it was still a P.I.T.A. to replace the ignition wire after we traced it back and found it was burnt where it was laying close to the headers but having the correct tool made finding the problems source far easier
Last edited by a moderator:
