It seems that many of the auxiliary systems of my car have decided to fail at the same time, but I can't really complain as I got the car fairly cheap, and the engine itself is still good. Recently I replaced the alternator and starter, and now the car starts up fine, and works well until I decide to move forward. Sitting in neutral or moving in reverse runs well, but the instant I build forward momentum the electronics start freaking out, stalling the engine. It also happens if the engine is running when I set the parking brake, leading me to believe it's not anything in the drive train.

As such I'm assuming it's a loose/stretched wire somewhere, but I thought I'd ask to see if anyone had dealt with something similar.

I've been back underneath the car looking for any loose wiring(as I had found an unconnected ground after replacing the clutch and hydraulics), and I don't see anything, but I could just be overlooking something simple...

 

Some more info would be helpful to us. Try setting the parking brake and attempt to take off. You know, kind of like powerbraking in an automatic. What this does is eliminate whether it's the actual forward motion of the car, or if it's the stretching of wires like you suspect. Start eliminating simple things like that, then you'll probably need a voltmeter to see if you're losing spark, fuel, power to the ecu, ground to the ecu, etc.

 

try attaching the ground strap to the engine by the starter.

you can mail me the cookie.

 

Revving the engine in neutral works fine, but it starts acting up if I do the above(try to take off with the parking brake attached). It will also do this if I apply the parking brake while I'm not moving(a quick pull. Nothing strenuous, but it is just enough to shift the car).

In addition to the engine almost stalling, all of the gauges no longer display any information after this event. Upon restarting the engine everything works fine until the weight shifts again.

Also, while I was poking around underneath I did look at the ground strap more closely, which led to the discovery that the ground right there is stripped bare. I wrapped it up, though probably not as well as I could have due to the limited space, and it still acts this way. But I could certainly attempt a more thorough job if that could be the cause. Either that or I have it strapped to the wrong bolt(It's currently attached to the longer bolt that attaches the starter to the engine).

 

if the bolt is tight then it should be fine, it still sounds like a ground issue.

 

Agreed. ^^

Ground straps are ground straps. If the wire's been stripped, it is still a ground strap. It could have no insulation on there, and still work perfectly fine and never shock anyone.

Try adding more grounds. Engine to chassis, transmission to chassis, battery to chassis... etc. Go crazy with the grounds, it'll only help. There's an archived writeup on improving grounds, just search for it.

 

That's what I thought, haha. Ah well, off to add more grounds I go...

 

And fixed! I'd still like to figure out what wire was originally causing the issue, but the extra grounds cleaned it right up.

 

20+ year old cars would definitly have ground problems.
I remember when I forgotten to put in a ground and the only thing grounding the engine and trans was the speedo cable.....let me tell, seeing smoke comming out the dash and melting the cluster right in front of me as I crank is a bad sight lol.

 

Great job! I wouldn't spend too much time trying to find that faulty ground. It could be the one from the transmission bell housing to the firewall, but that should be about as far as you should look. Otherwise, it'll take forever to find.