Mike Clark's Blog - Fixing Our Cavalier Z24

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Fixing Our Cavalier Z24

Just to report that I had lots of fun with our car today. This car is a 1991 Chevrolet Cavalier Z24 with a 3.1L engine. Sounds impressive, right? Well, when it works, it is quite sporty and can accelerate very nicely. However, something happened and it wasn’t running worth a darn. I continued to drive it for a few weeks, gritting my teeth the whole time (because it was a real chore driving it), but finally I had to do something about it.

I thought the most likely problem was that it needed new spark plugs, and possibly plug wires. So we got some a couple of weeks ago, and I started to work on it. I discovered quickly that in order to replace the plug wires I was going to have to take a bunch of stuff out of the engine (namely the alternator and the power steering pump) just to get to half of the plug wires, which some nincompoop of a design engineer caused the three back plug wires to be run beneath the aforementioned items.

So, hoping sincerely that replacing only the spark plugs was going to do the job, I proceeded. I got the three front plugs replaced with no problem, but when I pulled one of the plug wires on the back of the engine where it is very cramped, it broke and part of the wire was left on the spark plug contact. This was disastrous, because it was one of the plug wires that went underneath the alternator and power steering pump – and it meant that I was going to have to replace the plug wires too! Yikes. Well, I couldn’t do it then, because I had no time. So there the car sat, until today.

My wife Val got me up early (like 7 am) so I could get some of the work done before it got too hot (and yes, the sun DOES shine sometimes during the summer here in Western Washington – despite what you may have heard). Of course, I was very grumpy because I wanted to sleep in! But eventually I managed to pull the alternator and the pump out – I’ve replaced both of these items before, so it wasn’t all new to me). It got to be too sunny starting around noon (can’t see inside the dark areas too well because too much light making everything too contrasty – and it was hotter than blazes, too), so I couldn’t continue working until later, but when the sun got lower I did manage to finally get the plugs, plug wires, and the other parts reassembled. It was about 9 pm when I finally turned the key in the ignition and VROOM it started right up. It runs like a charm now, and we are very pleased to have it available again.

Oh, and instead of putting the three plug wires back underneath the alternator and power steering pump again (which would have been the height of idiocy, I think), I put them OVER these items. Next time it will not take me six hours to replace plugs and wires, that’s for sure.

I discovered an important resource for fixing this Cavalier, and that is a web page devoted to the car. Check out:

http://www.v6z24.com

This site has lots of stuff, ESPECIALLY a spark plug wiring diagram. During the festivities today I managed to get confused about which spark plug hooked up to which distributor connector -- despite my attempt to be very careful about this -- and I became very uncertain. Fortunately, a Google search turned up this site, and lo! and behold! they had a plug wiring diagram! At: http://www.v6z24.com/howto/wires

7/8/2006 7:17:09 AM UTC

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