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Subject:Re: Continuing Engine Troubles
From:Gerald Skerbitz
Date:Sat, 11 May 1996 19:14:13 -0500 (CDT)

Well, after a bunch of checking and asking questions and lots of help from
the list, I found the reason why the car was running continually rich.
The key to the answer was Dan Houg's information that the resistance
between the O2 sensor wire coming from the ECU and ground was 160K.  I was
getting something on the order of 20. (Not 20K either).  So with the
knowledge that the O2 circuit was somehow grounded, I started checking and
I found that it was connected somehow to pins 6 and 19 of the big
connector -- Air Flow Meter.  So I tore apart my spare wiring harness to
figure out what the heck was in there.  It turns out that the green wire
running to the O2 sensor is really something of a Co-axial cable. The
outside strands are tied to pin 6 on the connector end and they aren't
connect to anything else on the other end . . . except on MY car. The
problem was that someone shortened the cable to do a splice in the past
and had managed to loosen up some of the strands of wire which had
contacted the lug on the end of that cable.  This shorted out the O2
sensor and caused the thing to run rich.  

Now I have to see if it was something I caused while fixing or it was the
real reason it was running rich the entire time.

Thanks again to everyone who offered words of wisdom and I hope that was
the whole problem.
--
Gerry
Gerald Skerbitz <gsker@med.umn.edu> U of MN Med School Admin 6-5379
Home St. Paul,Ramsey County,Minnesota, USA