Not so poorly Beat

[Dion]

Hi all,

Got my Beat back yesterday. The noise that I reported in an earlier post has been fixed. The difference is amazing. The engine is really quiet and I can hear the MTREC growl.

The car seems a little faster on acceleration now too. Maybe the timing was slightly out before it was fixed?

It wasn't the distributor or the water pump as first diagnosed.
It turned out to be the timing belt tensioner pulley bearings, that were making the noise. The bearings had disintegrated, which also made the timing belt loose.

If the timing belt had have come off...
Doesn't bear thinking about. I have been lucky.

Total cost for parts & labour was £585!

Parts that were replaced are:
Distributor, water pump, timing belt pulley, timing belt, alternator belt, air con belt & coolant.

Hopefully, I'll be able to claim £185 back from Honda UK for the distributor.

Dion

[adrianp]

Glad to hear it is now sorted Dion,

As you said, if the belt had come off then you could have trippled your bill quite easily...

Any news about the one that only revs to 7000???

Me and Steve M are hoping to meet up some time next month to do the timing belt etc on mine so we'll have a look and see if we can fix my rev problem at the same time. Was the pulley expensive?? (thinking ahead here)

What age is the one that won't rev properly?? just wondering if it might be a different ecu batch or something as my car seems to run perfectly other than this problem.. (probably not...)

Adrian

[Dion]

Hi Ade,

I'm not sure exactly how much the pulley was. I estimated it at around £55 using this simple fomula:

Cost of part in JP Yen, divide by current exchange rate, and multiply by 3 for an approximate UK price.

My friends Beat is a 1991 model, and is still only revving up to 7000rpm. We can't seem to find out what's wrong, although we've not checked the ECU yet!

I suppose the best thing to do is try my ECU in his Beat to see if his ECU is faulty.

Dion

[Andrew Fisher]

Mine only revs up to 7000 too has anyone fixed this (94M)?

Andrew Fisher

[adrianp]

Hi Andrew,

94M, thats a lot newer than mine or Dions friend 91/92. And that also makes 3 with this problem that we know of...

We are going to be doing the timing belt change on mine in a couple of weeks and will be changing the Cyl position sensor at the same time.

Have you done a fault code read to see if anything is stored that could point you (us) in the right ditection??

If you need instructions then the procedure is basically in Pauls tech section under troubleshooting.

I'll update everyone with results after we have done the timing belt

Adrian.

[adrianp]

Well, Steve did my timing belt etc yesterday and the result is.......

No Change

My beat, since I bought it, has now had:

New Distributor
New Timing Belt
New Cyl Position Sensor
New Spark Plugs (Ta Steve)
New Fuel Filter
New Air Filter

Timing double checked & Ok
ECU Swapped for another, No difference...
Tappets checked & adjusted as needed

The only thing I can think of now is that either the Exhaust or Cat is slightly blocked and isn't letting the engine rev properly due to too much back pressure

Steve hopes to have an exhaust that I can try in the future but for now I'll have to live with the problem. Unless anyone has a CHEAP exhaust sitting in their garage that I can buy??

Well I'll update this again if/when we cure it...

Adrian
UKHBC No.59
Ipswich

[Dion]

Hi Ade,

Sorry to hear that you haven't found the problem with your Beat.

It can be very frustrating as my friend, Adrian found out.

But he's having more serious problems with his Beat now. Apparently, the woodroofe key was loose in it's slot on the crank pulley, as it had been messed about with by someone before Adrian bought it.

Hopefully, you'll find the problem soon and have your Beat revving to 9000 rpm!

Regards,

Dion.

[Andrew Fisher]

Sorry to be so slow to reply I have now tried to do the troubleshooting thang but I can't find the service check connector terminals. I know that when I do see them it'll be obvious, but can someone point me in the right direction please?

I also wonder about exhausts. Mine has some very fancy pipework attached with four pipes coming out of the back (not very convincing when you know how many cylinders it has...). Given that it rattles when it's idling I do wonder about the experience of the person who put it on. At some point I'll pull it off and put it back on again very carefully.

Andrew

[adrianp]

Hi Andrew,

Find attached a rather bad drawing of where to find the connector,

Hope it helps

Adrian

[Andrew Fisher]

Thanks for the lovely picture Adrian but I still can't find it. I haven't given up the search but it's hard juggling a full time job 2 year old child and a car!

Andrew

[adrianp]

Hi Andrew,

No Problems, I'll see if I can take a picture of it for you at some stage

Hopefully it won't take me too long to find a dry day to do it...

Talk soon

Adrian.

[Midship]

Hi!

I had trouble finding my service connecter, it turns out the yellow cap was covered by tape used to tape the connecter to a bunch of wires, so if you cant see a yellow cap hanging in the area pointed out by adrian it could be covered by tape.

might be of some help to you.... but prob not

Good luck with the troubleshooting

[Andrew Fisher]

Thank you so much for your help Adrian and JohnD.

I'm just about willing to be shown up as a total no-hoper here, but am I missing something totally easy about how to just get the sodding engine compartment lid thing under the carpet on the parcel shelf off !?!!

Feeling very small

Andrew

[adrianp]

Hi Andrew,

Ready for it then........

The "Correct" way to get the cover off is to unscrew the rear of the hood from the bodywork and fold it upwards...

BUT

If you unzip the rear window and carefully fold/roll it outwards onto the boot lid then after you have removed the soundproofing from the rear shelf you just undo the 4 bolts to loosen it.

Once undone, you just lift the rear edge (Minding the rear screen) and remove...

As the manuals normally say...

Assembly is the reverse of removal

Hope this helps

Adrian.

[Andrew Fisher]

Thanks Adrian I was thinking for a minute that no-one would be so stupid as to design a cover that needs half the car to be pulled apart to pull off and so I must be the stupid one for missing the hinge in the middle that made it easy, but it wasn't me this time it was them!

Thanks again

Andrew

[Andrew Fisher]

(Please note that this post is very anticlimactic)

After so much undeserved help I finally had a sunny day and got the cover off and couldn't find the blessed thing so just before I gave up I upended myself into the car (very dirty car light coloured trousers in my lunch hour before an important meeting) and there it was - taped up with an inch and a half of wire left bottom bulkhead, and I really mean bottom. Found! Shorted out, turned ignition, and.... the engine light just came on as a steady light. I hope this means no fault code is stored, or does it mean there's so many fault codes stored that it's given up on me?

My engine-light-related-paranoia-syndrome has been mounting since reading other posts and think the engine must be about to drop off. I'd never looked at the engine light until the last month or so and it's flashed on for about a second on take off and gone out again. I'd assumed that was new as I'd not noticed it before so it must mean something - but does it do that every time anyway so I know that the bulb ain't broke? (In my defence this bulb is completely shadowed by the steering wheel, and I am rarely awake when I start my car)

I'm glad there's nothing (recorded) wrong with my engine (if that's right) but I'm sorry for not helping the 7000 revs business.

Andrew

[Steve_M]

Light on all the time with Service connector bridged means no codes stored. it just stays on to remind you that it is bridged when you are checking/adjusting the timing.

Still have to try another exhaust on adrians car, to see if that sorts it. (exhaust ready and waiting) I still think it is a possibility mainly due to the rushing/barking noise when it hits 7000 rpm. Rather than it just being like the rev limiter which is just a rapid on/off of the revs.

More news to follow soon.

[Drmikey]

I will just revive this ancient thread as Ive just replaced the engine in a beat and we have the 7000rpm limit issue, so if anyone has resolved it in the last 10 years please post here

All usual things replaced.

Sounds like some kind of ignition retard/rev limiter, rather than a fuel cut. Maybe its a fail safe/limp mode which fails to tell you what the fault is!

[Andrew Fisher]

I will just revive this ancient thread as Ive just replaced the engine in a beat and we have the 7000rpm limit issue, so if anyone has resolved it in the last 10 years please post here

All usual things replaced.

Sounds like some kind of ignition retard/rev limiter, rather than a fuel cut. Maybe its a fail safe/limp mode which fails to tell you what the fault is!

Good luck with this. I always felt it was to do with the speed limiting, as 7000 or so rpm married with 87mph in 5th as I recall (it's a long time since I had my Beat but my kids STILL sometimes say 'Why did you sell the red car Daddy?' seven years later). So I wondered if there was a gear detector for 5th in the gearbox that had failed, or equivalent within the ECU. But I had my ECU redone and it made no difference.