Scirocco Tune Up Gone BAD!

[T Berk <tberk@mindspring.com>]

Hello.  My son Andy has a 87 Scirocco that he loves.  He's trying to
learn, and
got himself into a bind the other day.  I'm hoping one of you experts
will be
able to help him out.  OK he wanted to do a simple tune up.  So....he
replaced
the plugs, distributor cap and rotor.   Car wouldn't start.  Call
DAd....
I went over...(by the way, I'm a computer technician...)
and checked for spark.  No spark.  I opened the distributor cap.  Now on
the
side of the distributor there is a wire connection...kind of a boot.  ON
the
inside of the dist there are 3 thin wires going to this connection.  One
was
broken.  So, I was able to solder it back together ....we put the cap
back on
and voila spark!!!   I even went so far as to pull a plug, and put the
wire on
it, and crank the motor briefly, and sure enough...a healthy spark at
the plug.
 WE did this to each plug one by one, and they all had a spark.  OK
crank the
engine and nothing.  It turns over but nothing....no burp, fire,
nothing....
It's acting like there is no spark.    But there is.  He has a 1/2 tank
of gas
by the way.  

So, I sat down and thought about this thing.  He had driven it in, and
it was
running pretty well.  He then did what i described above and it won't
start. 
So, it's obviously something he did.  In other words, I'm confident that
it
just didn't coincidently have another part break down on it's own during
this
time.  

Now the connector on the side of the distributor that I mentioned
earlier is
very sloppy, in that it seems loose.  I may not have it "attached" to
the side
of the distributor properly.  But I get spark.....that's what I keep
falling
back on.  My gut tells me that there is still something wrong with the
distributor, but the fact that I have a healthy spark on all plugs
disputes it.
 

so then I'm thinking well maybe he screwed up the firing order with the
plug
wires, but even if he did, I would think that he'd still get a bad mis
fire or
something....
but he doesn't ....the motor just cranks and no firing.

Last point.  When he worked on taking the cap off, he moved some of the
...I'll
call it baffling, that runs from the fuel thing by the fender to what
looks
like the carbuerator   ....I know it's fuel injected, I just don't know
what
it's called.  Anyway, he moved it, and then put it back.  I double
checked his
work, and it sure looks like all vacumn hose and so on are back .....
I don't know if that last was important, but I'm trying to give you all
the
details.

Well, I'm hoping that we can fix it, I hate to see the kid have it towed
to a
mechanic, I'd like him to learn from this....any help wil be very much
appreciated....
And I can always reciprocate with computer tech advice....

Take care

Jim and Andy

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