I've had my 1980 Volvo 242 GT for while now. Absolutely love the car. I've completely cleaned up the interior, the body, slammed it and given it lots of love. Now here's the tricky part. I believe the number 3 cylinder is missfiring as the header does not heat up on number 3 like the rest of them do. I've had my Toyota 22RE gearhead buddies play with it and they think it could be timing or the distributor is off a tooth in the timing cuz one of their motors did the same thing mine did until they fixed that.

I've replaced, cap, rotor, plugs, wires, oil, air filter, motor mounts. Still sputters super bad and the motor bounces around real bad. When I floor it in first it sputters and goes nowhere until about 5,000 RPMs at which point it runs like a real motor, but then I have to shift.

It takes about 25 seconds when floored to run out first gear. And at idle the thing sounds like a cammed V8 of some sort. I'm at a lot and I'm hoping that maybe I can be shown the light.

My questions:

Vacuum lines, could this be my problem?

Faulty injectors?

No Spark on number 3?

Compression problem?

Could my K-Jet nightmare be causing this?

Any things that you could provide would be greatly appreciated. I'm struggling with getting this motor to run solid and I don't have the money to do a swap for a big engine yet.

MY SECOND ISSUE

Transmission does the strangest thing, when in gear and accelerating everything is fine, when I leave it in gear and take my foot off the pedal the revs drop down to idle without reving down or compression braking the car..... never experienced this before in my life. I'm lost.


Thank you for help!

 

I got a 79 242 DL and did the following AND NOTICED IMPROVED IDLE

RESISTOR under coil by right fender...white color...clean the contacts or replace...hard part to find but it screws with your coil...got mine from an 84 turbo model...Actually you can get the resistor...google it and you get a few square ones not cylindrical any more.

Marvel Mystery Oil
good for the K-jet system 4oz to full tank.

O2 Sensor
immediate improvement in idle

Voltage regulator on Alternator
took off old regulator as the brushes were gone...noticed a little more pep after

as far as the K-jet goes: bad accumulator, bad regulator, bad fuel distributor...Idle Valve

Second Issue

I got a 4 speed and when I compression break it does it but not like other cars...it works way less than a car I used to have 91 Mazda MX6 4cyl. I replaced my clutch and through out bearing
worn out clutch?

 

I'd take a compression test first, make sure you don't have a bad valve because what you are describing is a low speed misfire. Another, quicker way is to pull the spark plug wires off the plugs one by one and see if the idle gets worse correspondingly. If idle speeds stays the same you know which cylinder has the problem.

 

Thanks for giving me some things to try! I will do my best and get back to you!

 

I lost a cylinder on a 740 I was driving, and doing what lev said helped me figure some things out. While you are pulling plugs, if you get any that don't make any difference (like suspect #3 cylinder) check to see if it is wet. this will help to see if there is fuel getting there. Also, if you pull one and it doesn't make any difference, ground it and see if it sparks. Continuing... if it sparks, is it a nice white/maybe almost blue spark? If it is yellow, that is also bad.

Some things to think about.