List,
This is definitely non-Triumph related but a general lesson can be learned
and applied to our LBCs.......my daughter's 1999 Honda's Check Engine light
came on a month ago. I did the easy (seldom ever works) attempt at
clearing the trouble code by disconnecting the battery and reconnecting - the
light came back on. Since the car seemed to run okay, I told her to head over
to a shop offering a free engine light code check. They came back with
code# P1337 which translated to "no signal from the crank position sensor".
Their recommendation was replacement of the part for $335. She went to
another "freebee check engine light" shop and they confirmed the code and had
a similar recommendation.
A few Honda chat rooms on the web had great explanations of what the sensor
gizmo does and had advice on how to replace the sensor yourself. But,
since we Brit car mechanics and tinkerers know that problems are often simpler
than complex, I realized that the trouble code was telling the computer
that there was either an open (disconnected/broken) wire from the sensor to
the computer or the sensor wires had become grounded somehow.
So, armed with flashlights and a small mirror (it's really dark on the
drive belt side of these FWD engines), I found that the wiring harness to the
sensor had come free from it's snug mounting on the timing belt cover and
had been rubbing on the drive belt to the point where the belt wore a hole
through the harness cover and then the wire insulation fusing the two sensor
wires (now bare) together.
Splicing a piece of wire between the bad spot and the rest of the harness
wasn't easy since there's not much room to move your hands down there but I
got it done and the code went away. Honda has a good means of securing the
harness. More than likely (although hard to prove at this point) the
mechanic who replaced my daughter's timing belt last year was careless and
didn't secure the harness properly.
Lesson to be learned.......when your engine light comes on (and you don't
have a scan tool) - (HA, HA, HA - this is definitely not going to happen in
our Triumphs), find a shop that will read the trouble code, look the code
up on the internet and look for the smoking gun (simple problem) before
jumping into a major repair.
Chip Krout
Delaware Valley Triumphs, Ltd.
Skippack, PA
1976 TR6 CF57822U
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