Author: Mike

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How to Find a Bad Fuel Injector

If your fuel injected Jeep is running rough like it has a miss on one cylinder, the trouble may be a bad fuel injector. Fuel injection is great when everything is working correctly but sometimes trouble shooting the system can be like shooting in the dark. You can’t just remove the air filter and look inside like you can with a carburetor.

I have been working with a 1989 Jeep Cherokee six cylinder recently. The truck did not run when it came to me and I did not know its history.

One I got it running, it had a distinct miss of a dead cylinder. I first checked to make sure it was getting spark to all the plugs. I did this first by using my in line spark tester. This tool flashes when the coil sends fire to the plug. All six were flashing. I then pulled the spark plugs out one at a time and visually inspected them. They all looked fine and all looked the same giving me no clue which one was the trouble cylinder.

On older engines, you could simply remove the plug wires one at a time to see which one did not make any difference in the way the engine runs. However, I have found that you can’t do that on modern electronic ignition systems as the power in the spark plug wire will give you a very uncomfortable zap if you try to remove it while the engine is running. So I don’t use that method on modern engines.

Next I checked the fuel pressure at the fuel rail by connecting my fuel pressure tester to the fitting on the rail. The pressure was within specifications so I moved on to testing individual injectors.

To check the injectors, I used a mechanic’s stethoscope. I placed the tip of the stethoscope on each injector body and listened at idle. On the injectors that worked correctly, there was a very distinct ticking sound. On the injector that was giving trouble, there was no ticking sound. I moved the stethoscope back and forth between injectors a few times to get a clear image of the sound that it was supposed to make when it was working.

Before removing the fuel rail to change the injector, I tested the electrical signal to the injector. I made a simple test lamp using a parking light socket and bulb and plugged it into the wiring harness. Since the light blinked, I knew the injector was getting power and must be stuck or bad. You can also purchase a noid light that will plug into the harness, but for a quick check you can make a simple test lamp like I did.

To test the fuel injector firing coil you can use an ohm meter. Simply disconnect the wiring harness from the injector and place the probes across the two contacts of the injector. An intact coil will read around 15 ohms. However, as seen on this Jeep, an intact coil does not mean the injector works.

Once you have located the injector giving trouble you will have to remove the fuel rail to replace it. See my other articles for how to replace an injector or repair a leaking injector.

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Update on the Red Jeep

The Red Jeep Saga Continues….

Sunday I drove the red Jeep to my mom’s for Mother’s Day. On the way there I decided to stop to get her a card. I stopped at a Dollar Store near her house.

When I got back to the Jeep, it turned over slowly at first and then not at all. I did not have any tools or even jumper cables with me. So, I called my Dad to come rescue me.

When he got there, we connected the jumper cables but it made no difference. The starter would not turn at all. I tried the old trick of whacking it with a big wrench, but it would only give a partial turn before it stopped again.

This being a starter that had failed before, I was not entirely surprised. So we pushed the Jeep to across the parking lot away form the door and headed over to steal the starter from Scott’s Jeep that he has conveniently stored at Dad’s garage. We took the battery along to charge it just in case as well.

Having recently written and article on how to change a Jeep starter I was able to very quickly pull the starter of Scott’s XJ Wagoneer and head back to the Dollar General Store parking lot.

Back at the store, I swapped in the other starter while Dad reinstalled the battery above me. It all went very smoothly and quickly. There is plenty of room to work under the Jeep without even having to jack it up. And these are both stock height.

As Dad connected the battery cables, I hit the key. Nothing! We both looked at each other kinda stunned. We had even tested the other starter after taking it off Scott’s Jeep.

I found the one jumper that I had left in the console and began to trouble shoot the starter circuit in my head. My plan was to bypass the starter relay and see what happened. When I reached down to to pull the trigger wire off the relay so I could jump it, I saw it was already loose. It had gotten knocked off when the battery was removed or replaced.

I reconnected the green wire and tried the key again. This time it spun over like it should. We both commented that the engine sounded like it slowed down when it cranked.

After Dad and I cleaned up, I gave Mom her card and sat down and had a nice chat with them. Since we have been playing with old cars and Jeeps for a long time, these adventures don’t really surprise us anymore.

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Life in a haunted house.

When I was about 12 or 13 years old, we moved into a rental property in Greenwood Springs Mississippi. It was very convenient for us as it was just a mile or two down the road from property Dad had just bought where he planned to build us a house. In the evenings we would go and work on clearing out the house place and such.

My grandfather, Daddy Straw spent a lot of time with me during the time we lived at this place. He would take me hunting and teach me other skills that a boy my age needed for life in the country.

We had lived there a few months before we started noticing strange things happening. One of the first things I remember out of the ordinary was when I gave my mother a magnolia blossom as a gift. Normally these seem to wilt quickly once cut from the tree but for some reason, this one just never withered. I set it in a bowl of water on the dining room table and it stayed fresh for over a week. We finally got tired of it and threw it out but it still looked as fresh as the day I cut it from the tree.

The next strange thing happened one evening when we were all sitting around the dining room table after dinner. We heard a noise in the kitchen and we all looked up in time to watch the doorknob turn and the kitchen door open. We were expecting it to maybe my Grand Daddy Straw as he sometimes came in the back door instead of the front.

But to our surprise, the door simply closed on its own and no one was there. Then our attention turned to the other door to the dining room. This door led to the rest of the house. Just as before, the doorknob turned and the door opened on its own and then closed again as if a person had just walked through the room from one door to the next.

After a while, we got accustomed to sharing the house with our invisible roommate. We knew to look for missing shiny things under a certain board in the closet and to expect small items to move around when no one was looking. We even decided that our dog was not crazy for jumping on and playing with an invisible friend in the yard.

Never did any of us ever feel threatened by the ghost. We felt she was female and began calling her She. Once, my mother was ill and sleeping alone at the house. She said she felt a presence wake her up and as she awoke, she saw a white figure at the foot of the bed gently shaking her to wake up. Once she awoke, the figure was gone but she realized that the pilot light had gone out on the gas heater and the room was slowly filling with gas. The ghost had protected her.

The only scary time I ever experienced was one day after hunting rabbits with my Grand Daddy Straw; I went inside to put up the butcher knife I had used to clean the rabbits.

I tossed the knife onto the counter near the sink and turned to go back outside to get the rabbits. As I turned around, I heard the knife fall on the floor. I did not think anything about it, I just figured I had missed when I tossed it on the counter. I was more careful as I set down the knife by the sink and turned to go back out.

Again as I turned and headed out the door, I heard the knife hit the floor. Still, I thought nothing of it as the countertops were not quite level and I assumed it had slid off after I set it down. So this time I picked up the knife and carefully placed it on the countertop. I put it all the way back against the backstop near the sink. As I lifted my hand away I made sure it was stable and was not going to slide off again.

This time however as I turned to go back outside, the knife flew across the room and landed near the door on the opposite side of the room. This time, I decided to leave the knife on the floor and go back outside. I am not sure why she did not want the knife on the counter, but she made it very clear she did not want it left there.

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How to write safety procedures everyone will follow

Considering Personality Types in Safety Procedures

People are different. Every one looks at life though the lens of his own personality type. By addressing these different personality types, we can create procedures that every one will follow.

Carl Jung defines four different personality types: Feeling, Thinking, Sensation and Intuition. Most personality psychologist use four similar categories, but with different names.

Since Sensation personality types tend to be good at accounting, care taking, collecting data organizing and supervising, they tend to end up in supervisory positions. Since they themselves are good at following directions they often think others are as well. They often don’t understand people who don’t follow instructions. After all, Sensation people follow instructions simply because the instructions are there.

Sensation personality types will not normally question the procedure; they simply want it to be executed fairly and consistently. If you are inconsistent in your enforcement, sensation personality types will follow the procedure simply because it is the procedure. But, if you change the procedure, you better give them some time to prepare as they also like to plan ahead.

Feeling personality types are good at being cooperative, mentoring, teaching and training. So these are the ones you want to use to present the new procedures to the people. They will be more interested in how the procedure makes them feel than what it is accomplishing. Also, in presenting procedures to Feeling personality types, it is important to recognize them as people first and employees second. Adding some fluff to the procedure that recognizes their humanness will win over the feeling personality types while annoying the thinking personality types. So be careful to find a balance.

Thinking personality types will want to know why. They will also be the ones to suggest a better way. Be sure you listen to them. Even if you don’t implement their suggestions, be sure you listen to them if you want them to follow your procedure. Make sure the procedure explains why the procedure is important to the process and how you came up with it. These explanations are very important to Thinking personality types.

Intuition personality types are the ones who pride themselves in not following the rules and can be the biggest challenge to generating procedures that every one will follow. Intuition personality types tend to be risk takers and impulsive. However they also make great leaders so if you get the Intuition personality types to buy in to a procedure they will bring the others along with them. To make the procedures palatable to the Intuition personality types, be sure to add some room for creative expression where possible. Understand their need for variety. Allow some options for them to choose from. In training for a new procedure be sure to include real world examples. Use funny stories if possible to get and hold their attention.

I often see procedures fail because the writer assumes that all people think like they do. And many managers think that “Because I said so” is good enough motivation to get people to follow a procedure. If you want employees to follow procedure when no one is looking, you need to consider the personality types of the employees.

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The Red Jeep Saga

The Red Jeep Saga

Jeep Wiring Diagram from XKCD

My son Scott found the Red Jeep on Craig’s List. His original intention was to buy it for parts as the engine bay wiring harness was melted and he bought it for near scrap value.

The owner gave us a very small time window to complete the deal and pick up the non running Jeep. We arrived in the dark and began pushing the Jeep into position to load it on the trailer. In the dark, Scott hooked the tow strap to the axle in a way that put pressure on the tie rod causing it to bend just as the front wheels got on the trailer bed.

I was using a come-a-long to winch the Jeep onto the trailer and it became very hard to pull after the tie rod bent. I did not have the correct tools to pull the tie rod so I attempted to use a ratchet strap to straighten it. About this time the owner showed up with the paper work and wanting his money. He seemed to think we were complete idiots for having so much trouble loading the Jeep. He also just walked away without a word when I asked to borrow a wrench from him.

By the time we had the Jeep loaded, there was quite a crowd gathered at the closed shop where the Jeep was stored. We were very glad to be loaded and out of there as we were getting a bad vibe about the whole situation. But we left with the Jeep and the title so we were good.

When we got the Jeep back to the shop and looked it over, we found it was in excellent condition except for faded paint and of course the missing engine bay wiring harness. Scott decided to try to make it run again instead of just parting it out as originally intended. I assured him it would never run again, but he was determined.

Scott and Megan began searching pull -a- part yards for a wiring harness. The 89 is a strange year for wiring harnesses. It appears that on some Jeeps, and this being one of them, that a wire was omitted from the computer harness and had to be added at a later step in the assembly. Since the computer is under the dash in 89 a hole had to be drilled to accommodate the extra wire. This hole was drilled rather crudely on this example.

Scott eventually found a harness that did not have the extra wire and got the whole harness and computer just in case. After several hours of sorting out the various plugs, he finally got it all connected. Much to my surprise the Jeep fired right up. However it did have a stumble or a miss.

We double checked the injector wiring and spark plugs but could not find the source of the miss. However everything else worked great.

A few weeks later, I removed the bent tie rod and straightened it using my pipe bender. It actually turned out to be pretty straight.

Scott got busy with other projects and let the Jeep sit over the winter. He eventually found a potential buyer for the Jeep as it sat.

He fired it up and started to drive it back to his home but he did not make it very far. Over the winter, we both forgot that the front end alignment needed to be set after repairing the tie rod and the Jeep was just not running right with the miss.

I took it back to the shop. A few days later, when I got ready to set the front end, it would not start. It seemed the NSS was stopping the starter from engaging. I had a spare transmission in the shop so I pulled the NSS and plugged it into the harness and it still would not start. I even put a jumper across the wires to the NSS and it still would not start.

A few days later, I studied the wiring diagrams and then tracked down the wires to the starter relay. I found that by jumping the wire that goes to the NSS to ground, the Jeep would start. I also found that there was no continuity in the wire from the relay to the NSS connector. So, for now, there is a jumper in place to start it.

Also, when I got started, the Tachometer and temperature gauge no longer worked. They had been working fine earlier.

After setting the toe, I took the Jeep for a test drive and it drove great. But it still had a miss. I drove to Dayton to meet a friend for lunch and when I got home, I parked it on the porch behind Janice’s Jeep to drive it the next day.

The next day, it would not start. I had to push it out of the way. I checked and rechecked the starter wiring. Eventually, I applied power to the starter motor with a jumper cable and still nothing. The starter motor had simply quit.

I pushed it to the shop and installed a spare starter. It fired right up. But it still had a miss. There was also a strange noise coming from the power steering pump so I got out my stethoscope to listen to it. By the time I had the stethoscope in hand, the pump had quieted down so I decided to listen to some other things.

I noticed I could hear the click of the injectors quite distinctly so I decided to listen to them all. When I reached number six, there was no click. Just the whine of fuel in the rail.

A few days later, I decided to check further. I pulled the wire off and measured the resistance on the injector. It read about 16 ohms – the same as the spare. I connected a voltmeter to the harness and there seemed to be pulsing voltage there. It was hard to tell with my digital voltmeter.

Next, I connected a spare injector to the harness and I could feel it clicking in my hand. So I decided to swap out the injector.

I pulled the fuel rail and then when I went to swap the injector, I had misplaced it. I looked for several minutes knowing it had to be nearby; but eventually, I went to the bin and got another spare. I popped it in place and re secured the rail. I started the Jeep and had to shut it down immediately as gas was spraying everywhere. The O ring on the spare injector was bad.

I pulled the O ring off the original injector then I put it all back together again. I started it up and this time there were no leaks. However, there was still a miss. I was stunned.

I made up a test light using a side marker bulb and socket from the parts ZJ. I plugged it into the harness and sure enough the light blinked when the injector should be firing. I got out the stethoscope again and listened. No clicking. About that time, I saw where I had put down the first spare injector. I plugged it into the harness and I could again feel it clicking in my hand.

So, once again, I pulled the fuel rail and swapped the injector and O ring. I let the rail pressurize and checked for leaks. Then I hit the starter and fired it up. It took a bit, but soon, the engine smoothed out to the nice purr that these inline sixes are famous for.

The tachometer and water temp gauge still don’t work but at least it runs and drives well. I am sure that there is simply a ground wire loose that will fix both the gauges. I just have to find it. Marcus Ohms suggested I look behind the cluster so I will have to pull the dash to check it out.

Update: I pulled the dash to look for a loose ground connector. I also printed of the wiring diagrams and started looking for things the non working items had in common.

First I tested the ground connections and found they all had continuity. I also checked the power feeds to the dash and they all had voltage at the proper times.

I noted that the Tach and temp gauge that did not work shared power with the fuel gauge that did work. So I ruled that out.

I began working on each individual gauge. I started with the purple wires of the temp sensor. The temp sensor has a test feature that grounds the sensor while the key is turned to “START.” This feature was working fine. I then checked from the connector in the engine compartment to the cluster connector and found there was not continuity.

I tried tracing the wire but it quickly disappeared into a harness on both ends. I considered running a new wire but I left that for a later possibility.

Next, I tested the tach circuit. I found that the green and white wire again did not have continuity from the coil to the dash. It did have continuity however from the coil to the test plug under the hood. Just not to the dash connector.

Finally, I moved on to the NSS connection. Since all three of these stopped working at the same time I was still looking for a common element. The black and white wire from the starter relay was easy to trace as it was partly out of its harness. I soon tracked it to a dead end plug. I quickly noticed that this pug also contained a green wire and a purple wire. I got very excited.

I looked around the engine compartment and found the other end of the connector. I plugged them together and I could not wait to give it a try. Trouble was, the dash was still all apart.

So, I at least wanted to see if it made any difference so I hit the key and the starter engaged! The NSS was working! I got even more excited.

This being a dash with a mechanical speedometer, it takes a bit more work to put it back in than the later electronic speedometer. I finally found that if I connected the short cable extension to the cluster I could feed it through and screw it to the speed sensor under the dash and connect it together there.

Once I got it all in place, I was very excited to see the Tach jump up when I started the engine. I had to wait a few minutes for it to warm up before I confirmed the temperature gauge was working as well.

I drove the Jeep to my office this morning and I love the way this Jeep drives. I may have to keep it.

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