16v barely running,anyone got some advise?MORE ON THIS SUBJECT...

[scirocco at vintagewatercooleds.com (Eric S)]

Hmmm, well, what kind of smoke?  Black?  If so, you are definately going
super rich OR your plugs aren't firing (or the richness is FOULING the
plugs).  Like I said, you'll need to get it to do it again.  If you
suspect its the O2, you could try unplugging it and see if the car runs
fine (it should go into default mode, car should run).  The more and more
I think about this...I think your car is going super rich for one reason
or another...example:

My 2.0 16v pickup, CIS-E Motronic.  It has a terrible cold start problem,
which I traced to the cold start injector not being told to fire.  So, in
my cheapness, I just jumper the cold start injector to battery real quick
when its real cold out...guess what?  It runs EXACTLY  like you describe,
smoke and all, till I pull the thing off the batt, then it only takes a
couple of seconds of running to clear it out and run fine again (hey, it
starts, thats all I care when its -10 out).  See, what I am doing is
setting the Cold start to 100% duty cycle (full open)...it basically
floods the engine, over compensating for the lean condition that is
causing my cold start problem...but hell...it works.  Point was, damn near
exact symptoms as you describe.

Next time it does this to you:  Verify all plugs are firing by pulling
them and visually checking for spark.  Next, pull the O2 connector, see if
car starts...and next, just for giggles, check to make sure your cold
start injector isn't leaking OR firing at the wrong time (unplugging it
and trying to start it).  You never know...I've heard of some whacky
stuff.

As for plugged cat...I seem to remember that would be something that would
creep up slowly and wouldn't be affected by cooling it down...I mean, if
it gets plugged, its gonna stay plugged.

-- 
Eric
www.vintagewatercooleds.com

79 VW Iltis
81 Rabbit Truck 2.0 16v
81 Scirocco S (TDI Swap project)
90 Corrado TDI
91 Cabriolet (2.0 Crossflow swap project)

A J said:
> Eric , its running and then dying out but only after
> its warmed up , so what I was thinking was the O2
> warms up and then kicks in and dumps too much fuel in
> making it pour smoke out the exahust and sounds like
> its running on 1 cylinder and then dies , the plugs
> were black the first time it did this and I had
> checked the plugs about a month before that and they
> were perfect , this time it died and then I waited for
> things to cool (over 2 hours) and then it started ,
> blew out some extra smokey exhaust and then I drove
> home , thats why I'm thinking O2 sensor , I guess it
> could even be my Cat too causing problems (??) -Aaron