Stalling in the car wash?

I've had my sambar van for about 2 weeks now, and have had it stall on me on two separate occasions in the car wash. One time was in a brushless automatic wash, and once in a wand wash. Both times it seemed to be related to high pressure water being sprayed somewhere in the vicinity of the rear passenger wheel well.
The van would then turn over but not start, like no spark or fuel...
Both times the battery only lasted about a minute before the starter drained it too low to turn over. After about 5 minutes and a jump start, it started perfectly both times

Anyone have any idea what might be in that area that could be sensitive to water being sprayed on it? Fuel pump? Air intake?
I've since replaced the battery with a new 250CCA tractor battery, and I'm hoping that weak spark from the old battery may have been part of the problem.

-josh

 

interesting. Timetripper might be able to give you some ideas.
I don't take my mini-truck through the auto car washes due to the high pressure being sprayed everywhere.
I do the manual car washes with the hand sprayer because then you can go easy on the battery and sensitive parts, then use full strength for others.
But I'm not sure if they have car washes like this where you are?

 

Obvious stuff would be water getting into dist cap,or possibly in to a main connector.

Is it EFI or carb.??
If it is EFI I would look to see where the PCM is,on on truck it is behind drivers seat,but obviously not in the same location on a van.

Try taking the engine cover off and just spraying water yourself to see when engine starts to fart around.

Easier to find and fix than you may think

 

Yeah, I'm definitely going to avoid the automatic car wash from now on. I only took it through to try to get the salt off (we hardly ever get snow, and when we do, the salt trucks come out in force)....In addition to the stalling, the underspray came right up an soaked the top of the battery.

I was in a manual wash the second time it did it, which surprised me more. It happened either when I was spraying the passenger wheel well, or underneath the passenger side. Now that I finally have a chance after christmas, I'm going to have a look in the next day or two and see if I can figure out what it is.

 

It's carbureted.
yeah, shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

 

I'm pretty sure I'm having a similar problem. Today it rained like hell, and there is melting snow, making for a very wet drive. On my way home, the van completely lost all power, and left me stranded in the left lane. After pushing it to the side, and giving it some time, it started again. Before that it just cranked with no spark too. So I went on my way again, 10 minutes later the same thing. Took about 15-20 minutes of sitting and she fired back up - but it dies very suddenly and leaves me backing up traffic!

I am thinking the distributor is getting wet, which is not an expensive item but will replacing it help very much, or is it just the downside to having a points style ignition?

 

don't replace the distributor, just dry it out and clean up the contacts. you should replace anything that looks like it needs it, but the water gets in there and corodes stuff and will short your points or foul them completely. i haven't tried it myself, but someone once told me to spray the inside of the cap with WD-40... afterall WD stands for "water displacing"... i guess it took them forty tried to get it right

 

Done that been there at the car wash. Inside of dist. will get wet, and then truck wont start.
Had to walk home and get my truck and trailer to go pick it up. Simple minds do simple things. When I got back to the house, first thing was seeing water beeds inside dist. cap. And hey! dont use your good shirt to wipe it out. My wife gave me a spanky spanky for getting a good shirt dirty. Reinstall dist. cap and Vaaarrrooom.

 

Didn't end up being water in the cap on mine. It was corroded points, combined with broken seals on two spark plug wires. When water got in the boot, the already weak spark pretty much went to sh*t.

I replaced the cap, wires and plugs, with sealant on the cap flange, and went through the auto wash (just had to see) without a stall.

Also cured cold, damp start issues I've been having.

In case anyones looking, I spent quite a while at Lordco finding a compatible cap and wire set. I went with NGK RC-SE93 plug wire set (from a 95 suzuki swift, I think), and a Niehoff WA465D cap. The coil wire needed to be shortened (or looped back on itself once), but the plug wires were a perfect fit. My van is a 1990 2wd carb'ed.

 

My sambar doesnt like the rain either. i have been thinking of ways to fix it. i know someone who has custom skidplates built on and it seems to help alot.

 

josh.e: Is it a Sambar you own or some other brand?
It might confuse people if you are posting parts for another brand in the "Sambar" forum.

missminis: Up in my neck of the woods it as as wet can be [We are known unofficially as the "Wet Coast"]
I have not had any problems at all with water or moisture in my 91 Sambar.
Maybe you are missing some factory shielding that keeps the engine compartment dry.

 

On my truck, the seal between the distributor cap and the distributor has been stretched so it won't properly seat. Something you might want to check. I can minimize the opening by guiding the seal into place while fastening the distributor cap.

 

Rural, On mine it looked like just a simple O-ring so I took it to a industrial supply place and just matched
it up with a new one.
Also for the record there is two styles of distributors - ones that use cap with "clips" to hold down and
other style that uses cap that screws down with two screws.

To get right size O-ring just bring along a old or new distributor cap along with old seal and get I.D. of O-ring
to match I.D. of cap, make sure thickness of ring matches old and your all set.

 

I've got the clip-on distributor cap. The seal on mine is much more involved than an O-ring. It's got three (I think) large indexing tabs that mate up with the distributor and some smaller tabs that mate with the cap. Definitely a purpose-built item. (Too bad.)

 

It's a sambar van, 2WD, no supercharger.
The old distributor cap that was on there had a mitsubishi triple diamond emblem on it. It was a two screw mount, 4 point, no o-ring, with a breather tube.
I assumed it was OEM, but maybe it wasn't?

Interestingly, we matched the cap by looking through pictures of rotors until I recognized the rotor my distributor has in the catalog. The rotor I have looks just like this one (suzuki/mitsubishi):
http://minibrutes.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12_14&products_id=12
which is the suzuki/mitsubishi one.
and NOT this one:
http://minibrutes.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=39

The catalog then had a bunch of cross reference part numbers for caps (several different 3 and 4 point ones) that we went through until we found a match. There were several different makes and models of vehicles that this rotor was associated with, although Subaru wasn't one of them. Keep in mind though that this is North American catalog and only referenced north american cars.

Maybe my distributor is not factory original? Maybe the rotor/cap I have is interchangeable with the subaru rotor/cap?

btw, I see you're from V.I.
whereabouts? I'm in Victoria.

 

Thanks for all the info.

1. The major car manufacters outsource their oem parts off to any one interested, it just caught me off guard with the Mitsi part but I totally believe you.
I would think your distributor is 100% original and it might even be made by Mitsi for Fuji Heavy Industries [Subaru's Corporate name].

2. Your cap [and Rurals] is the correct one for the N/A Sambars {from my research} with straight up towers.
On further search they also make a screw down style with straight up towers, so there is at least
three different cap combos and maybe four for the Sambar.

3. The last picture of the rotor [josh.e post - the one that doesn't fit] is for the screw down cap used on the S/C Sambars.
This cap has the sparkplug towers laid over 90 degrees and uses a O-ring underneath the cap. See picture #3 below.

4. So your cap didn't have a moulded ring undeneath it like Rural described?

Photos below courtesy of Japanoid
#1

Straight up screw down style N/A engine

#2

90 Degree screw down from S/C engine


#3
This photo from Minibrutes as per your link above

Straight up towers with clips Subaru Part # 2216KA151
or Niehoff WA465D as per josh.e

I might make this a sticky for people to make it easier to deal with getting replacement parts.

 

josh.e: I'm up the road in PA [on the way to Tofino].

 

Hey Rural is this your distributor with the gasket just visible by the electrical connector?

 

Mine is the screw down style, cap and rotor as in timetripper's first picture. The minibrutes picture I linked to above was wrong. I didn't notice it didn't have mounting screws. I removed my original link to avoid confusion.

I'm 99% sure that there was no gasket (although now you have me doubting if it should have been there). Definitely no new gasket came with the new cap. Regardless I put some RTV silicone around it to keep water out.

Attached are a couple pics of my old cap (you can just barely see the triple diamond emblem behind the left side of the coil tower. One thing I did notice was that the points on the niehoff cap were not as tall as on the mitsi, so the effective distance from the mounting flange to the top of the points is larger on the new one. It worked fine anyway.

There was also a Niehoff WA465C at Lordco for $8 more that looked identical. When you look that one up it cross referenced back to the WA465D. I have no idea what the difference was, if any. To be clear, these were replacement parts for the two screw mounting type cap, NOT the clip in style.

 

josh.e: I think you will find that your distributor has a small O-ring like mine, normaly it is stuck in a groove
in the base of the distributor but in my case it had come dislodged and got squashed previous to my owning the truck.
This made it quite obvious that it was there, but if it was all ok then it is not something you would notice unless you were looking for it.

 

My sambar is the only one of its brand around here so i dont have one to compare it by to see if i am missing some factory shielding parts. But i will definatelly look too see if it is

 

There was a recall on the 90~91 Sambars that had a improper splash shield installed.

The web site page for the recall is here

I did find a picture last night of the rear frame of a Sambar but not sure what year it was.


This is the frame exactly as you would see it looking at the rear of the truck.

It is really hard to tell from the recall picures [in the above link] which is the correct shield and the picture is poor quality so even if I read Japanese I don't think it is readable.

They did mention in the recall two important things IMO.
1. If the dist. cap has a vent on it then there must be a hose on it that runs up to a high location.
2. Subaru did make a protective boot for the distributor to help solve the problem.

So I would say correct hose location, gasket between the cap/ distributor [either O-ring or flat moulded]
should be in good shape are keys to keep water out of distributor.

A light smear of water proof grease on the gasket might help keep water out.

If you truck doesnt have any shielding then just use the pictures as a guide and fab up some of your own.

Another thing to check is that there is a rubber skirt that protects the front of the engine bay.
When under the truck if you look towards the rear it should be fastened up close to the box
floor and hang down near the suspension. it is fastened on with rubber push pins that sometimes fall out.

This is the shield that is in front of my distributor on my S/C

 

That's interesting. I'll have to see what splash guards mine has.....

The breather hose on my cap has a has a clip that connects it to the #1 and #2 plug wires, so it stays high, and faces the opposite direction from the passenger wheelwell spray I'd assume. I'll post a pic when I get home from work.

I remember my 85 hyundai pony years ago had a protective rubber boot on the distributor. In that case it looked like it was an afterthought to protect the distributor from a leaking fuel pump, as the pump was directly over the distributor. Anyway, one of those might be just about the right size for the sambar distibutor.

-josh

 

Here's a couple shots of the breather hose clip on mine.

I climbed under tp have a look, and it looks like I have the shorter style splash shield, with the 90 degree bend in it, similar to the one shown in the lower middle frame of the recall diagram. I tried to take a picture, but I couldn't get a good one without jacking up the van.

Since the presence of the breather hose would seem to indicate that mine had the recall work done, maybe that's a clue as to which splash guard could be the "good" one?

 

whoops, here's the pics.....

 

Hey my truck is definately missing those shields. i will save these pics for reference when i fab some for it, thanks for the info and helpful pics!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yes, that looks like mine...except that those things that say "Do not remove." On mine, they've been removed. Uh-oh!

With the warm weather that we've been getting, and the thawing, I've noticed that my truck is doing it's intermittent loss of engine power trick. I think the bad distributor gasket is the culprit. I should be getting a new distributor cap, rotor, and condensor in the very near future. Hopefully, the cap comes with a new gasket. Otherwise, duct-tape might be involved.

 

i took my dist cap off and added a little bit of rtv silicone to seal it,put it back together then sprayed it with a silicone spray until i can get my new gasket.

 

Here's a silly question that fully expects an interesting answer: Why vent the distributor cap at all?