[g259fsg]

Interesting to see the diagnostic connectors on a later car, with the plastic boot protecting the open end of the connector. My car is very early so possibly they simply used a plug-socket arrangement with a sealing O-ring to keep everything clean. That little evolution is now lost in history.

I spotted that the coolant sensor was identified as faulty, however when I looked at the exported data file, the sensor was only showing as faulty until the coolant temperature reached about 77 degC, above that it showed no fault as the engine warmed up. The graph of the engine warming up (above) looks completely normal. The sensor is just a thermistor, so a fault could only by a very high or very low resistance outside the normal range, in which case the ECU uses a fixed default value.

I think you maybe couldn't export the .csv file because you didn't have a gmail address set up. You can see the options when you ask to export the data file. The App does automatically fill-in the "To" address with James Portman's address presumably so he can help with diagnostics. I just replaced that with my PC email address and the file came across straight away. It did need a bit of formatting in Excel to make it look nice. There is a large amount of data timestamped every 5 seconds, so a very useful resource for tracking things.

[GTiJohn]

I can sense an article on diagnostics being written over the winter

[g259fsg]

An article could certainly be drafted. I'll probably wait a little while to avoid "egg on face". We went for a good drive this morning and the car ran perfectly. Fingers crossed.

[GTiJohn]

You're being very thorough and by doing the 'Sherlock Holmes thing', you're ruling out what it can't be but you'll be lucky to replicate something like some muck in a fuel line.

[220 GSi turbo]

A diagnostics thread on this forum would be a very good idea, purely for the discussion of the benefits of different diagnostic equipment for our cars.

For example Testbook vs Pscan vs Rovermems vs EOBD and any other relevant systems.

I currently have an old Omiscan tool on loan from a colleague and it has an MG Rover suite loaded on it. Haven't tried it on any of our Rovers yet, but might get the chance to have some 'playtime' at the weekend.

[g259fsg]

Great suggestion from 220 GSi Turbo to have a review of the pros and cons various diagnostic tools for Rover engines. I don’t think I’d be the best person to do that as I’ve only very recently used one!

Over the years I’ve thought of getting something for our 1990 214, but usually heard that these early cars are incompatible with more modern diagnostic tools which anyway were quite expensive. So, I never went any further with it. Worked on the assumption that garages would have something if needed, but maybe not so sure now.

I was very grateful when SteveB pointed me to James Portman’s Rovermems App and the associated three-pin diagnostic cable. What a brilliant product.

Thinking about this whole thing, the early R8 designs are over 35 years old, so the diagnostic machines developed then would be quite basic. This was long before the days of smartphones, tablets or even performance lap-top PCs. In fact this was still the era of analogue mobile phones. The device also had to be robust enough to survive in a garage environment.

The early cars used the three-pin diagnostic connector – earth, serial data in and serial data out. Did all R8 models up to 1996 use this interface, or did the higher-performance and Honda engines use something else? I think by the late 1990s, the industry standard was the 16-pin parallel diagnostic interface OBD2, which is presumably what you get with the R3 and HHR models.

As it happens, the early serial diagnostic interface is pretty compatible with the USB connector as it is also uses serial data interfaces. In fact, it’s quite fortuitous as there was no USB in 1989! Most computers in those days used parallel interfaces such as VGA and RS232. The OBD2 interface would need to convert from parallel to serial data to use a USB interface.

The modern smartphone has phenomenal processing power and memory, and it’s a brilliant step by James Portman to use that to record and display the Rovermems diagnostics via its USB port. It must be far better than anything available when the R8 was new.

I’ve been having some more ideas about using Rovermems to record the engine dynamics while driving the car around as it can store loads of data every five seconds which you can export and analyse in a spreadsheet. I guess if you could also record GPS data to give speed and distance, you might be able to get more on the actual performance.

[g259fsg]

Returning to this thread, I’ve now got a couple of significant events to report on our 214 GSi SPi, which happened yesterday. Last time, I reported on the results from the RoverMEMS Diagnostic App. Which didn’t show any defects in any of the sensors feeding the ECU. The diagnostics on this early ECU are quite limited, so other intermittent faults could be present. Others have mentioned some of these too, but this was my list of possible causes for the sudden but short loss of power not detectable with the diagnostics:

1. Faulty ignition, rotor arm breakdown, sparking plug failure, degraded coil. Apart from the coil, everything is new within the last couple of years including the leads. Having had trouble with this in the past, I used hopefully quality parts (Lucas and Land Rover).
2. Intermittent failure of the fuel pump, loss of fuel pressure means the injector doesn’t work. However, the fault happened quite abruptly and then returned to normal almost instantly. I would expect a pump fault to be less sudden.
3. The injection head has an intermittent fault after 35 years. There are two parts to this. The injector itself which is switched on and off by the ECU, and an integral pressure regulator which I believe reduces the incoming pressure of about 2.5 bar to a regulated pressure of about 1 bar which feeds to the injector. If either of these is faulty, the fuel injection level will be wrong.
4. Following from that, it’s also possible there is a fault in the ECU, not sending the right signals to the injector.

Now to yesterday’s events. I’d just left home with the engine fairly warmed up, and it did the same thing as I described at the beginning of this thread. There was a sudden large loss of power. The engine was still running, but would hardly move along a level road in first gear. Then a few seconds later, it burst back into life and performed completely normally as it had been doing earlier in the day.

The second event in the afternoon I’d never seen before. I was going on a short trip of about 10 miles, and warmed the engine up for a couple of minutes. I was in the workshop collecting some things and I heard the car making some funny noises. It was running very rich with a somewhat explosive exhaust spewing out condensation and black smoke with a strong smell of petrol. Massive over-fuelling. After about 10 seconds it went back to normal. I tried revving it up and it was OK, though the tick-over was slightly lumpy. During this episode, the revs remained around 1000 rpm which suggested the ignition was working correctly and also the stepper motor on the throttle. It seems unlikely that the ECU would set such extreme conditions to the injector.

I took another car instead as I wasn’t confident it wouldn’t have problems.

I’m now very suspicious of the injection head, possibly the pressure regulator. There’s no servicing info for this SPi module. I think they are now pretty rare as the 200/400 only used it for a couple of years before changing to MPi, although the K-Series Metro used it for longer. The part number is MZW1049 or MLB10010.

If you’ve got any ideas or suggestions, or know of a second-hand module, I’d be very grateful. Maybe there is a specialist somewhere who knows about these and services them. Maybe someone in the Club has tried taking it apart.

The 214 is our everday car and has been since new. If I can’t find a solution, it could be the end of the road for this lovely old car as it nears its 35th birthday. It runs but there are huge questions now about its reliability.

Thanks for any help and insights.

[Mr Teddy Bear]

It might be an ECU fault?

Talk to Jon Wilcox down here in Wickwar he still has the appropriate Rover Fiche, best to catch him in the mornings. I believe he will post stuff. He did have someone who tested/repaired ECU's.

It would be a great pity to scrap the old girl over something that should be repairable.

[g259fsg]

I would certainly be very unhappy to scrap the car. I do have a spare ECU MNE10013 (and there are one or two on eBay), so as part of the diagnosis I could try swapping it. The irritating thing about this fault is that so far it has been very intermittent and transient, so it's hard to pin down. The over-fuelling yesterday afternoon was a new fault, but might be related to the other problem. Both lasted about 5 to 10 seconds.

I take it John Wilcox in Wickar is this business https://www.aewilcox.co.uk/indexWILCOXnewhomepage24.htm.

I mentioned earlier that the problems started a while after I replaced the fuel filter. It may have disturbed some debris which could have caused a malfunction in the pressure regulator or injector.

It would be great to get a spare injector to exchange with the one on the car, but I can't find one. I could try taking the throttle body off the car and dismantling the injector and regulator to look for foreign bodies.

I'll continue to use the car for local trips and the fault may become more stable.

[Mr Teddy Bear]

Yes ex Rover dealer so he knows these cars he might have an injector.