Weak Spark

[Noel]

My Starion just stopped the other day, so after investigating I discovered that the spark from the coil was really weak. I had an RAA bloke come out and he ended connecting my radio noise suppressor to the negative pole of the coil and this seemed to work. Meaning to take the car to the mechanics, I took it for a short drive and it ran great most of the short trip but started to die every now and then. I took it to the local ultra-tune and after lots of testing, he seemed to think it was the "knock controller(?)" (which is worth about $300 brand new). I still suspect it is something else and don't want to spend $300 on something that may not fix it. Anyone have any ideas ?

The radio noise suppressor idea has stopped working since it got to the mechanics (apparently after mucking around with the car it worked fine without it connected and then died when he reconnected it), and whilst I was there it was idling fine for about 5 minutes and then just died again. Is this symptomatic of the knock controller ?

Any ideas will be appreciated.

[Cookiemonster]

Yep, classic symptons. The knock box is on it's last legs.
Someone on here will have a 2nd hand one lying around.

[Noel]

Thanks cookie, just wanted to make sure.

[filiboy]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/87-Stari ... enameZWDVW

I dont know will that match 4g63 but it is cheap :beer

[Cookiemonster]

You'll need one specific to your model. Note the knock box differs between the JA and the JB so make sure you get the right one.

PM Flav (Melbourne) or Starion VR4 (Brisbane). They might be able to help you out.

[Noel]

I own a Starion JD and was lead to believe that it is the same unit as for the other models of Starions and the Cordia.

Thanks for that URL filiboy, I will check it out. I am not sure if its the same model as the one on my car and I'm at work now so can't find out till later. But definitely cheap enough.

Thanks for your help guys. As you know, working on Starions can be very frustrating at times.

[JPC]

The JA knock box has a gold-coloured metal box; the JB and JD had a much smaller plastic-cased knock box. I don't know for sure if the JB and JD ones are the same (should be, though). I am fairly certain (could be wrong, though) that a JA one will work in a JB/JD, but the wiring connections need to be changed.

[Noel]

Bought a second hand knock box the other day and everything is fine again. Thanks for the help guys, great diagnostics.

The JD knock box appears to be reasonably generic (sigh of relief), it is marked with a E-101 and the one I picked up from the wreckers was labeled Starion/Cordia. Still not cheap though, if I had been quicker and followed the thread filiboy's listed I could have saved a lot of cash.