Car dies after running for awhile

[Driven]

Vehicle: Superformance S1

Drivetrain: Ford Zetek

Engine Management: Alpha

 

Symptoms: Cold start, works great. At Night, works pretty good. But once the water temps start seeing close to 200F, the car will hesitate, then eventually die. Won't start until the engine has cooled down.

This happens if while driving or idling in the driveway.

 

What I've tested:

- ECU is extremely hot to the touch, not sure if the Alpha will shut down once it reaches a certain temp. Considered installing a PC fan into the ecu cover.

- Fuses behind glovebox were fine, but replaced them for good measure. Still happened after replacing.

- Relays are also all connected properly. When the car was stumbling, I was pushing on the wires and relays to see if any change, no change whatsoever.

 

What I haven't tested:

- I did read about another person's issue with fuel system wiring... haven't looked into that yet.

- fuel filter cleaniness. Car has less than 3000 miles, so not sure if the filters would be clogged yet, plus I'd imagine it would run poorly all the time vs. dying when it gets hot.

 

Anything else I should look at?

[NVP66S]

Not familiar with the Alpha ECU specifically, but it seems wrong that it is extremely hot to the touch. There's a reason many cars have them mounted inside the car and not in the engine bay.

[Off Road SHO]

I had a loose connection in one of the 8 pin connectors behind the glove box. They had used a cable tie threaded though the connector's mating clips to secure the connector halves together, and in doing so caused an intermittent open in my lighting circuits. Grrr.

 

Next time I have mine out I will check the ECU's temp.

 

Tom

[coffee break]

How much hotter is the ECU compared to the surfaces/components next to it? If you have an IR temp scanner it would tell you relative temperature differences.

Also, vapor lock comes to mind.

[Driven]

The ecu in the Superformance is mounted inside the cabin, behind a small glove box. There's very little airflow to the area, but a lot of engine bay heat transfers to the bulkhead the ECU is mounted to, thus increasing the heat to the ECU.

 

I'll check the temp, but it's not a dramatic difference between the ECU and the bulkhead it's mounted to -- Although leaving your hand on the ECU cover for more than 5 secs will leave you a nice burn, whereas the surrounding area is likely burn-inducing after 10 or so secs.

 

I'll check for more loose connections.

 

I haven't considered vapor lock ...

[supersportsp]

I went through a hellacious process trying to figure out why nearly exact symptoms were plaguing my Zetec powered Caterham. Even though almost nothing pointed to the fuel pump, that ended up being the problem. It operated fine at start-up and while driving for short periods, once it got warm it would begin to be intermittent and then simply stop. Let the car cool down for awhile and it ran fine. This went on for many (too many) months while trying just about everything else (plugs, leads, ignition module, ecu, crank position sensor, battery wiring etc, etc.). Finally, a mechanic hooked up a sensor to the fuel pump while on a test drive and found it started to fail while driving.

[Driven]

To revisit, the issue has gone away once we replaced the ignition coils and wires with a MSD unit. Car has been running like a top since.