Hey everyone,
I have an old heritage from 1998 which I bought about 4 months ago. I’m sure this will be a familiar problem to many, but since I got it there have been flat spots in the rev range and serious hesitation around 3000 to 3500 rpm. After months of struggle, sleepless nights and bleeding joints and no CEL I finally found my solution :29:.
First, let me explain what I’ve been up to today (again this will sound familiar to a lot of people out there)
Cleaned almost every electrical connection and valve (including PCV and EGR)
New knock sensor (CEL when I bought it, which is long gone)
New socket caps (NGK)
New sockets (NGK laser platinum)
New fuel filter
New air filter
Three or four bottles of injector cleaner
Checked all the vacuum tubes, changed a few too!
New upstream O2 sensor (again no CEL but heard they sometimes play without CEL)
Throttle body cleaned
Controlled and tuned TPS and has a smooth increase in resistance, no spikes.
I had codes read a few times but nothing was there which was good I guess but it didn’t get me any closer to solving my problem
And lots of other things too
None of these things saved the hesitance, except for some minor performance improvements here and there. I was getting close to taking it to a dealer to diagnose the problem :gasp:.
Then last night I was reading about ground wiring kits, some homemade and some store bought, I thought it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.
SOOOO today I went out and bought a set of 16ft jumpleads (6 gauge) which I’m going to split in two so you actually get more for your money than buying a fancy single core, I got a load of copper ring terminals and I borrowed a narrower work form (about $300 for one of these apparently)
and some heat for the edges. I determined the lengths and put a ground from the battery on the driver’s side of the intake manifold (with a cut back to the pillar tower) then to the passenger side manifold and over the other pillar tower, with a final one from the battery negative to the wall of fire.
Took it out for a spin and guess what????? it just didn’t work :29::29::29::29::29::29: It was a brand new car, the power increases along with the throttle response, and finally no hesitation.
Hope this helps someone else, I was in a position where I could see no end to the problem. Oh and by the way, I also got a Haynes manual. The problem is listed in the troubleshooting guide, but the solutions were vague at best.
Peace. I’m going to sleep a happy man tonight, I now have a whole new love for my baby.
