My E280, 1994 refuses to go beyond 130 kmph

[rindum]

Hi,
I recently acquired this car, it has 4 speed automatic transmission and gear shift is normal. The car start surging (I feel the fuel is getting cutoff) at 120 kmph and when I press the paddle further till the right end it refuses to go beyond 130 kmph and the rpm stays at 3500.
There is some relation with with the engine rpm which does the trick as when I try to quickly accelerate the car surges and gears do not shift but if I accelerate gradually it goes without any trouble to 120 kmph and problem starts here.
Please advise.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Francois]

Hi,

I have seen similar simptoms in a Mercedes with a cracked distributor cap...

Even a hairline crack can cause something like this.

 

[kid-jensen]

rindum,

Sounds like it's fuel related (fuel starvation?)


First check fuel pressure, then rate of delivery.

I think the procedure is in the Haynes manual.

 

[piestore]

fuel

Hi

if it is HFM engine man system sounds like air mas metre fault

 

[jack-n-gill]

Car won't rev

Try a bit of lateral thinking.
Had a similar problem with an Astra. Lost power at the top end. Checked everything electronic, fuel, air filter, injectors, absolutely everything. It turned out to be the cat converter disintegrating and partially blocking the exhaust. It eventually sounded like a steam engine with pressure building up in the exhaust system. Took the cat out and all this honeycomb filling dropped out of the front end but the rear end was almost blocked solid. Cleared it out and it went OK after that. It'll need a new one before the MOT though.
With a 2 litre engine it sucks in a litre of air per rev of the crank, at 3000 revs that's 3000 litres (659 gallons) per minute of air alone. Add the fact that the fuel mix explodes to produce the power and the expanded mixture is more like 5 times that figure, so a restricted exhaust is the last thing you need for a healthy power output.
Hope this is of some interest.