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Comments
My thoughts, too...
I wonder how far that window unit would travel once it left the vehicle if the car was involved in a 90 degree, 60 mph crash.... Not to mention the generator on the trunk lid...
http://www.autoblog.com/2013/07/17/honda-mean-mower-hits-60-mph-in-4-seconds-cut- s-to-130-mph-w-vi/
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport; 2020 C43; 2021 Sahara 4xe 1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica Wife's: 2015 X1 xDrive28i Son's: 2009 328i; 2018 330i xDrive
Top Gear is so ridiculous. They should be named "Over the Top Gear!"
Love the Fiesta that passes on the road course in the second video.
In CA, water heaters have emission requirements.
In one of the other forums about engines stalling, http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/direct/view/.ef13c30/464 Shifty had a link to this website.
http://www.autotap.com/techlibrary/solving_intermittent_stalling_problems.asp
See the subtitle of the page?
"Articles to help you out-smart your mechanic"
Really? That article should be titled "How Not To Do Diagnostics" but as I have said before, want to make your page seem authoritative? Start by cutting down techs, and they didn't waste a second before they got right to doing that.
There probably is some good information on that site but I only had time this morning to scan two of their articles. Here is the other one. http://www.autotap.com/techlibrary/engine_misfire_uc.asp
Both of these articles have a lot of testing and parts throwing taking place and ultimately both of the authors had to take their vehicles to a shop to have the problems diagnosed. Neither of the problems are very complicated at all and both should have been solved for much less than just the cost of the parts that were being tossed at the problems. Read through those two articles and try to pick out the errors in their approaches and see if you can explain why they failed with the testing that they did. As techs we often learn from our mistakes as much as we do any other way, right now those authors don't even know what mistakes they made, they only know that they got unsatisfactory results.
Stay on just those two articles for now, we can look at some of the other ones later and hopefully find some good routines and then we will discuss what the differences are.
A crank sensor from RockAuto runs $10 to $25 plus shipping. There doesn't appear to be any need to relearn anything on this make/model either, so it's just a replacement fix.
Why was that guess any more viable than any other? Is it because it has the appearance of working this time? While the crank sensor failing could indeed cause a loss of spark, it also causes several other symptoms that would help point a finger in the direction of the sensor, at this point they are completely ignored by or unknown to the author. The crank sensor is only a part of the system and many of them have been replaced that weren't bad and didn't solve the problem.
Instead he "tested" it at room temp and couldn't get it to fail and assumed the part was okay.
Yea, "tested" when the problem wasn't occurring and incorrectly on top of that. You will see a lot of missapplied testing in the second linked article as well.
So what is the right way to diagnose that component?
What are the other clues to that part acting up when it does fail?
So what is the right way to diagnose that component?
For you or for me? For me, swap it with a known good part. Works? I'm good to go.
For me, that's what I did with my recent misfire on the 3800 leSabre. Luckily my other leSabre had the same parts. Replace coils, ignition control module, new quality sparkplug wires, new plugs. Down to injector as most likely problem.
Still not certain about cause of the buildup of deposits on the plugs I took out that had 40K miles on them.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
What good is a trouble tree when you are dealing with a problem that isn't present at that moment in time?
For you or for me?
For the level that I (we) have to achieve in order to meet a customers expectations. The authors are both using your method, count how many times they failed before they claim success.
If you were paying either one of them, how would you rate them as "mechanics"?
Dropped transmission pan, cleaned filter, 4 quarts of synthetic ATF. Used a hand pump to remove about 6 quarts of old Dexcool (no petcock on this radiator), and refilled with 50/50 mix.
Replaced all plugs and wires. And there's where the real fun was. All of the spark plug boots were welded onto the old plugs. No big deal on the front, on the back, murder.
Finally found a solution, a radiator hose tool. The kind that looks like a ice pick with a weirdly bent, curved tip. Hook that under the metal heat shield, and Bob's your uncle. Of course, I'm not going to talk about the 2 hours that I and my neighbor wasted before we discovered this trick. (smile)
Still not certain about cause of the buildup of deposits on the plugs I took out that had 40K miles on them.
The plugs I just pulled, with 130k miles, looked very good. I was a little surprised at just how good they did look.
There is a drain plug on the bottom, driver side IIRC. It's accessible through a hole in the air shield OR you can remove the air shield. I don't recall the size socket that someone said would fit the prongs on the drain plug.
Part #18 in the diagram:
Part #18 in the diagram:
>All of the spark plug boots were welded onto the old plugs.
That's why I said I'd remove my wires at 60K or so on the next car, just to lube them to keep them from sticking to the porcelain.
How do your knuckles look after fighting with those wires on the back?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
What good is taking a car to a mechanic when all you ever hear is "cannot reproduce the problem"?
Here's your diagnostic tree. Spend 20 minutes skimming those posts - beats watching American Idle (sic). Then what? You check the battery cables and grounds that evening and run by AutoZone for a $15 crank sensor in the morning.
If that fails, you've missed some quality TV and you're out $15 if you can't return it. Plus the tow if the Saturn dies in the AutoZone parking lot.
We worry about the shrinking pool of auto techs that will be able to repair our cars but we can't overlook the fact that the net has made the world smaller. information is a lot easier to find these days without having to coax our Chevy down to Bozo's. Now, in three years say, if someone is restoring an old carb car and it intermittently cuts out, they'll find this thread and go aha, I knew I wasn't removing that old gasket correctly.
So even if there are fewer techs, their ability to get and share information will keep growing, not to mention their ability to more easily reach the engineers who actually designed the car and its running gear. And that resource will have to be near the top of the tree.
Well I guess all of the other possible causes for that symptom have just been rendered implausible because that was the correct answer that one time.
I suppose he was a big fan of Bozo the Clown. :P
Nope, but it makes sense to me to try to rule out the easy stuff before calling a tech.
We had to pretty much tear the front of the car off to get to the module, which BMW was kind enough to *GLUE* to its casing besides.
Parts $22
Labor---PRICELESS (4+ hours, requiring the front of the car to be pulled into 'service position' and the radiator hoses and shroud to be removed).
I also know now why my AC compressor clutch blew out in the first place---which BMW was kind enough to *NOT* make replaceable without throwing away a perfectly good AC compressor inthe bargain.
So now we are about $1600 in the hole total, most of which expense was caused by stupid, STUPID design. :mad:
There, I feel like I've vented.....ahhh....
Since when is even some debris floating around in the bowl easy? I've got a few thousand carb overhauls under my belt and from the front seat of the car can tell which portion of a given carburetor is primarily responsible for the fuel that is (or is supposed to be) delivered to the engine at any given load and throttle position. That's a critical learned skill that must be applied to know where in the carb one needs to be looking in order to be sure that you identify the cause for the symptom that the owner is describing, and that I felt when I drove (or attempted to drive) their car.
Simply put, the information without the experience to make good use of it doesn't help and the second link demonstrates that in great detail. The second link goes from one silver bullet that could have been the answer, right to the next one with no real plan in place.
The chevrolet carb story is essentially one I've done numerous times, with or without a recent, previous repair. It's the invisible part of what techs do that lead Bozo to the carb and without the experience to know why the information could easily be a red herring.
And it saves you from this scenario.
(Debris in a carb was the deciding factor in my buying an electric mower after our move here 3 years ago. The owners of the house we got left me a gas mower, but one look at the engine and I got rid of it. Lost too many hours messing with Tecumseh carbs back in Idaho.)
I took a hard look under the hood of one of those recently and it looked like it would be a royal [non-permissible content removed] to work on!
Heck, I thought some of the old cars were tough!
I googled Bozo's Garage and sure enough, there it was in New Mexico just like he said!
Looked like nothing but five star reviews too!
My search was "Chrysler P0301 misfire" (without the quotes). Engine-codes.com says these are the possible causes:
- Faulty spark plug 1
- Clogged or faulty fuel injector 1
- Faulty ignition coil 1
- Fuel injector 1 harness is open or shorted
- Fuel injector 1 circuit poor electrical connection
- Ignition coil 1 harness is open or shorted
- Ignition coil 1 circuit poor electrical connection
- Insufficient cylinder 1 compression
- Incorrect fuel pressure
- Intake air leak
The next section says "The P0301 code means that the cylinder 1 is misfiring or is randomly misfiring. Start by checking for intake leaks an if no leaks are found the next step is to replace the spark plugs on cylinder 1. If the problem persist more tests needs to be done to diagnose problem, see "Possible Causes".
Hm, so if I were a tech and followed the one site's suggestions that I found, I would have grabbed my torch and done the faster idle rpm test. And bingo. (It's nice knowing the answer beforehand since I read the whole story in that example).
Okay, fix the gasket and I'm done. If there was still a misfire, then I'd think about the plugs, injectors and coils (in that order). But no misfire, no codes, I'm quitting while I'm ahead.
Too bad my bozo shop can't afford the Chrysler scan stuff so that the PCM could have been flashed - I could justify playing with the computer. :shades:
This is good, lets see just how complete this information is.
- Faulty spark plug 1
Spark plugs can be the source of a number of different style misfires. Everything from fully fouled, which will be a steady misfire under all conditions, to carbon tracking or cracks in the porcelain which will be very dependent on the demand voltage to ionize the gap of the plug. (The higher the demand Kv the more likely a misfire occurs)
When evaluating the misfire, knowing what engine loads (throttle positions)cause higher and lower spark demand voltages can aid in identifying the failure.
- Clogged or faulty fuel injector 1
This is actually the toughest one of the bunch to prove in some cases. Access to the injector might be easy, or could be anything but easy. The low amps probe and an oscilloscope can be a real aid in this diagnostic as well as using a pressure transducer on the fuel rail and measuring the pressure drops as the injectors are pulsed. This is a test that can be done manually with the engine off with a pulser and a fuel pressure gage too.
Faulty ignition coil 1
You should have a corresponding trouble code with a Chrysler vehicle. With a Ford you would find the coil code and you would not find a misfire code. There have been a lot of failed coils that take out the PCM drivers and you end up needing a new PCM.
- Fuel injector 1 harness is open or shorted
- Fuel injector 1 circuit poor electrical connection
If either of these are the case you won't have only a P0301, and depending on the manufacturer (Ford for instance) you would not find a P0301 at all because the code set criteria to allow the misfire monitor to run.
- Ignition coil 1 harness is open or shorted
- Ignition coil 1 circuit poor electrical connection
Same as with the injector circuit codes, and potential to block the misfire monitor completely depending non the manufacturer.
- Insufficient cylinder 1 compression
Yea, that's part of the basics. Can you picture a cylinder with good compression cranking (160 psi) good at idle running (90 psi) but get over about 2500 rpm and suddenly the compression drops ( below 50 psi) and the cylinder starts misfiring? Where would you be looking for that problem?
- Incorrect fuel pressure
That's not going to bother just one cylinder, it doesn't belong here.
- Intake air leak
Easily proven without ever getting out of the front seat of the car.
Too bad my bozo shop can't afford the Chrysler scan stuff so that the PCM could have been flashed
Since when do they need to have the Chrysler tools to do reflashing? J2534 protocol works just fine with Chrysler products.
How do your knuckles look after fighting with those wires on the back?
Actually, my knuckles aren't too bad. My arms are definitely scratched up. I was coming in with one arm from the side, and the other over the top.
That's why I said I'd remove my wires at 60K or so on the next car, just to lube them to keep them from sticking to the porcelain.
Definitely a good plan. This one wasn't my car, or it never would have gone 130k with the original plugs and wires. I am a bit obsessive about regular maintenance.
J2534 protocol works just fine with Chrysler products.
So, what I really needed was a better scan tool that would show more and better codes (to rule out or narrow down the injectors and coils)?
Okay, how do you determine an intake air leak without getting out of the front seat of the car? Crank it and turn on all the accessories, pump the brakes and turn the cruise control on?
When I first read that, I though you must have been wrong, so I went to www.realoem.com to check.
Nope, you're 100% correct. No A/C clutch available by itself, and you have to buy the clutch/compressor as a single unit.
Go figure...
Anyway, I'm glad you seem to have it working now.
Broken or weak valve spring?
Having to replace an entire compressor if only the clutch is bad really sucks. THIS is why I would NEVER own a BMW or anything with similar blood.
And of course their incessant decision to clad their cars with RFTs.
I hear the new Caddy has gone that route too now. Idiots..
Cars for the rich.
That's what happened with my 2004 Mazda MPV. Well, known for coil failures. 6 plugs, 6 coils. The front coils were easy as pie to replace. The rears I had dealership do as upper intake was removed. Not inexpensive either. Luckily the PCM was still under warranty when I took the van in for a misfire, which by the third time knew it was a coil. Under warranty by a few thousand miles and dealership replaced at no cost.
I think that's pretty cool to be so passionate about one's job... wanting people to know what the automotive career is really like. Helping people figure out how to figure out solving auto problems. Despite the occasional drama, I'm certainly glad you hang around.
Sometimes you have to bang some pans together to get people to stop and listen.
Cardoc, I could be wrong, but after reading this in-depth analysis on mis-fires, I've come to the conclusion that despite all the warts... You love your job.
Lets change one word there, scratch out job and write in career.
You eat, breath and sleep auto mechanics.
If I wasn't a mechanic/technician by trade you'd probably find me in the garage at home doing something as a hobby.
That's why you never go on vacation,
That's a money thing, there simply isn't enough GP to keep investing in software and scan tools etc that we need to provide the level of service that we do, and do regular things like try and keep our eighty year old house from falling apart.
and stay up all hours of the night posting... which in turn is why you are a bit on the cranky side on occasion.
Posting, reading, studying, got to do something when I can't sleep.
I call those grocery lists, and just because something ends up on the list doesn't mean that its more or less likely to be what is causing the symptom that the driver is noticing. A techs job is to gather information that allows him/her to eliminate what is not causing the issue as rapidly as possible so that they have plenty of time to concentrate their testing on what really might be or is causing it this time. The biggest mistake people make is in thinking that just because their car has a similar symptom to what someone else's car was doing that it has to be the same problem. Any assumptions like that as the first step in diagnostics will usually lead you down a dark path and make it take longer to figure out the problem.
So, what I really needed was a better scan tool that would show more and better codes (to rule out or narrow down the injectors and coils)?
What is needed is the training and experience to use the information, and then the tools. Injector and coil codes are SAE mandated so they will show up on a generic scan tool. But getting a code in your hand is only like seeing a book on a shelf. You can see the title, but what is it really all about unless you open it up and spend some time reading it? The codes description as well as its enable criteria, and code set criteria all need to be understood and that means in many cases they must be researched. That's just another reason why the whole idea of running to the net expecting a fast answer is sending consumers the wrong message.
Okay, how do you determine an intake air leak without getting out of the front seat of the car?
This is the "Cliff Notes" version. The size and location of a leak will cause variations in exactly what you will feel, as well as what you see in the scan data. Vacuum leaks will have an impact on fuel trim, for this description we will only consider a vacuum leak that is fixed in size. We will also only talk a MAF sensor system for this, because a MAP system often has the ability to completely mask a leak other than a higher than expected base idle speed.
Sitting in the car engine idling you can feel the engine misfiring. Using the scan tool see if it will show you which cylinder is misfiring with the live misfire counts. (If your tool doesn't display that data then you do need a better piece of equipment). With the cylinder identified, what do you feel in the misfire? Is it steady? Harsh or soft? Or is it random like a fish-bite.
Check the fuel trims and O2 sensor readings. The bank with the misfire will sometimes be trending leaner, which means the fuel trims will be adding slightly more fuel. The bank with the misfire will also be very erratic and this can be seen in the O2 sensor signal as it rapidly comes in contact with combustibles from the misfire and raw O2 in the exhaust. Now being that the vacuum leak is fixed in size it will be able to disturb the air/fuel ratio just a given amount because it takes time for that air to enter the system. While watching the fuel trim data take the engine from idle to about 2500 rpm. The vacuum leak now has only 1/3rd as much time to lean out the cylinder. You should see a response in the fuel trims not making as much of a correction, and the cylinder might now be firing some of the time. Go back to idle and hold the brakes with one foot, put the engine in gear and increase the speed to around 1500 rpm with the other. Under this load against the brakes there will be no manifold vacuum so a vacuum leak now cannot influence the air/fuel ratio at all. If the misfire is gone and the fuel trims are now normal the problem is a vacuum leak and now you just need to go under hood and locate it.
That again is the short version, there is much more to this and being able to feel this goes all the way back to the carburetor days. Being able to drive the car and know that the symptom was occurring while fuel should have been getting delivered by the main metering system and not when the secondary's were providing fuel was a very important skill that nobody taught. We had to learn this on our own and it takes time, a long time.
Yep. The weak spring still manages to close the valve, but it takes longer to do it. So at low engine speeds the cylinder fires, but speed the engine up and the misfire shows right up. Now add in that you could be looking at two hours worth of work today just to do a compression test on just that one cylinder and you will quickly find out who has the discipline to take a solid approach or not. Oh, and we would use a vacuum gage in the past to help find things like this but today the big plenums that you find on the engines can really dampen out the pressure pulses in the intake and make that inconclusive.
And it saves you from this scenario
I'm not following you on how one saves someone from the other. I'll make a stronger debate that the loss of the easy stuff, which should be able to help subsidize the shop while they are working on the nightmare stuff only makes the nightmare stuff less likely to be solved.
That easier work should be getting into shops so that the younger techs can be learning from it. When that easier work gets lost to them, then they have no choice but to try and take on the more complicated work even if they aren't ready for it. There once was a time that the work was easy enough and labor times generous enough that the senior techs could make a living while also mentoring the younger group. But the pressure to be cheaper and yet still deal with the greater complexity stripped most of that away years ago. That leaves the trade struggling to keep the people that it does attract, and how many times have I said it, we aren't even attracting the people that we need.
BTW did you see the new Mazda commercial with the automated braking system on them now too? Being able to "do brakes" means being able to service the entire system and not just slap pads in and leave the sophisticated sensory and control system to someone else.
Definitely a good plan. This one wasn't my car, or it never would have gone 130k with the original plugs and wires. I am a bit obsessive about regular maintenance.
We learned a long time ago that you can't remove a plug wire without risking scratching the porcelain spark plug. Even the slightest scratch can help create a path for the spark to jump and then you get a carbon track on the plug and the wire and end up with a misfire that you didn't have before you touched the wire. If you are removing them for any reason, you must consider replacing them unless you are absolutely certain they are still serviceable.
BTW to remove the plug wires and those tubes, I use my largest needle nose pliers (about 18" in length). With them I can carefully use the valve cover for leverage and get them off with a reasonable amount of effort.
Well, from a consumer's point of view, that's going to happen less and less for a couple of reasons.
One, easy jobs are going away (your automated brakes example).
Two, easy fixes are all over the net and lots of us like to try to fix stuff ourselves before calling the pros. It's not just the money; it's the time going back and forth to the shop and the satisfaction of fixing something yourself (your "I'd be in the garage doing something statement).
I'd of guessed you'd have six or eight spark plug boot removal tools in your box.
I'll see your 80 year old house and raise you 27 years.
Cranky mechanics? - quite the punster, Jipster.
The part that gets to me is not how many of those tools I have it's when I come across a situation that none of them help with. iirc 3.3l Chrysler Town and Country mini vans, the rear plugs are easiest to do from underneath with the car on the hoist. The wires typically won't come off and there is no room to get any tools in there to help. I've had the spark plugs break off with nothing but the grip from my hands before the wires came off of them. Eh, good enough I was replacing them anyway, so as long a they are now out of my way.
Well, from a consumer's point of view, that's going to happen less and less for a couple of reasons.
Yea there's nothing new about that, but it reminds me of an old commercial. "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later" except for one minor problem. There is no reason to expect me to be there for you when later finally comes.
Yep, that's what fooled me. I heard a fan--and really what mechanic would say "oh, that's not a fan running"?
Only my buddy's very pricey scan tool nailed it. Once he pointed this out to me, suddenly, all the symptoms fell into place.....AC runs cold in morning with car parked under shade tree. AC is pretty good at highway speeds..but the minute you get into traffic and the interior of the car heats up, the AC can't cope.
If you test the AC with the engine cooled down, the pressures look fine on the gauge--but test when the car is running all day, and the pressures are way too high at 250.
And yes, a Mini Cooper S is a real pain to work on. 4 hours shop time to replace a resistor? 12.5 hours for a clutch? WAH!
Next time, if I buy this car again, it's getting pitched when the warranty runs out.
Also you have to enjoy driving a skateboard--with sport suspension and 17" tires, this car rides hard on rough roads and pogo-sticks around a lot. On the highway, it's very competent and comfy for such a small car, and the BMW build-quality finally becomes apparent.