Engine miss fire

[Bob 2316]

109e 2.3 16v cosworth 1986 auto.

i have had trouble starting the car. and have had the engine tuning bod round to have a look. he hooked up all the cables and things to the gizmo box and concluded that i have an engine miss fire on one of the cylinders, nbr4 cylinder i think he said. (anyway i have the print out in the car for it)

his conclusion was that if i change the distributor cap and rotor arm that usually clears up starting problems! he checked the ht leads and although they are nasty aftermarket ones the said they were ok (phew have been on to MB and was told new ones were £150.00 a set) yeah like im gonna buy off them !!!! so i changed the dist cap and rotor arm.

so now im wondering whats next to clear up this miss fire?
does any one have any thoughts or suggestions on what it could be and how much it would probably cost at an independant to fix ???
could it be faulty injector or sticking valves ? is it a top end rebuild ???

would be grateful fo any input you may have

rgds

Bob

 

[Bob 2316]

update

ok well seeing as i havent received one reply to my regquest for advice i decided to replace the HT leads, managed to get some proper MB ones from a breakers. have repaired the distributor screw problem that occured earlier replace cap and rotor arm and have now replaced all the vacum hoses on the top of the engine. still wont start properly!!

whats next a compression test to see if air/ mixture is escaping from a cylinder ??? or is it something electrical??

would be gratefu;l for any ideas

rgds

bob

 

[Arnie]

I presume you have checked and possibly replaced the spark plugs. Their colour should tell you more about what's going on. Ideally they should be a very light grey/brown colour with no oily or sooty residues. Check the one on number 4 and then you can do a compression test.

It may be that your fuel injectors are faulty or the cold-start enrichment valve is not working (jetronic fuel injection).

What does the printout from the "test" show?