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:confuse: :sick:
"texas gal in distress"
Thanks
Steve B
Anyway, if you did not get your stalling issue fixed yet have them smoke the throttle body and you may find your problem.
Cheers
When I try to start the engine while warm, it will turn over normally but it won't fire. When the car does eventually fire, the engine will catch, shudder and chug as if it is not getting enough gas. Then the car will jerk and stall out.
If I press the gas pedal when the engine fires, I can push through the chugging, stuttering stage and the engine will stay running but the idle will be very rough.
If I let the car sit for couple hours after it was warmed up, (so the engine is cool again) it will start up normally.
I have had new plugs and wires installed.
Fuel pump tested o.k.
Fuel Filter replaced.
Crank shaft sensor replaced.
I had the entire fuel system and spark plugs thouroughly cleaned.
I have invested over $1000 in the car and it still has this problem. Does anyone know what is going on? I would really appreciate any input as I am really not in a situation where I can afford to buy a new car.
Thanks so much!
-Kelly
My second problem is intermittent, when I am driving a highway speeds, in any conditions, with or without cruise control, the engine rpms will drop to around 1500rpm. It is for less than a second, then it returns to normal. It happens about once a month, and fuel tank level does not affect it. Any ideas what would cause this? I have replaced the fuel filter, and plugs. :confuse:
About $50 at any auto parts store. Located on the fuel rail right on top of the engine. Consult your Chilton's; easy fix.
Cheaper but probably not easier. Pulling an a/c compressor and it's related components is never easy. I guess that's a matter of opinion though. Also consider that other than a bypass pulley not being made for the 2.4L, it would only be about $40-50 cheaper than a clutch.
"...the engine rpms will drop to around 1500rpm."
Does the vehicle physically slow with the RPM drop or does the automatic trans upshift causing the drop? What RPM are you running before the drop? Is the trans sticking in third while occasionally wandering into overdrive?
Just a guess without driving it; I'd say 3-4 shift servo. Sounds like it needs to go to a trans shop. I'm more familiar with the 4L60E in GM light trucks than these little guys, but if GM does anything consistently that overdrive servo has gone bad.
I need some help.
My son has a 2001 Pontiac Sunfire. The car worked great up until about a month ago. He started having problems where the car would start to lose power and stall when he was going slow or at a stop light. I am in Canada and we thought that maby his gas was freezing up so we put some methalhydrate in his gas tank. It helped for about a week then it started doing the same thing again.
We decided to change that battery as the car got so when it did not start he would require a boost. That helped for about another week.
Now even with the new battery and a boost we can not get his car running at all. The odd time with a boost my husband can get it started but it will not keep going then it just will not start again with a boost.
He borrowed a error code reading machine from a friend but the car is not putting out any codes. He has tested the battery conections. Does anyone have a solution for our problem it is getting annoying. My husband is mechanicaly inclined but everything he checks appears fine. Does anyone have any suggestions please.
Thanks Debbie
My car has been great since I've owned it up until the beginning of December.
It revs high while I'm stopped and gives the car a jerk, then everytime I take my foot
off the gas it stalls.Took it in 3 times to get it looked at and the mech. can't find anything wrong with it. PLEASE HELP
I feel like I'm driving Christine
WHAT DID YOU DO??????
If i'm not mistaken the gap should be 0.85 but don't quote me on that. Check each plug Check under the hood for the gap settings for the spark plug. If you cannot find it call autozone, murray's , pep boys or your local mechanic and ask for the gap settings for 2000 pontiac sunfire 2.4 engine.
If you replaced the wires, did you replace them one at a time, starting with the longest? Always start with longest to shortest and one at a time. Did you strip the hole the spark plug goes into. If you did, you will have to take it to a mechanic and have that hole rethreaded. I stripped mine and my car did the same thing hard to accelrate up hill I had to smash the pedal to the floor.
I got curious and checked the plugs , come to find out, I stripped the hole. Sounds to me like it is missing because of either the wires or the plugs. If you replaced the wires yourself(no mechanic involved) you should double check them and make sure you have them from longest to shortest comming from the spark plug hole to the coil. If they are off even one wire, that can cause missfiring and hesistation. If the spark plugs aren't gapped right or even if one is off, it can cause your symptoms too.
Is your airfilter hose attached tightly? Check to make sure that is clamped down to the airfilter housing next to the battery(on my 1996 sunfire it's next to battery). I hope some of this helps sorry so in-dept but I like to help if I can.
After my husband spent about 2 weeks chasing the problem it turned out to be a wire. Apparently because the computer is located up under the front right inner fender it is a common problem in this car where if you hit say a snow bank or whatever it damages the inner fender and can leave the computer exposed to the weather and in turn causes corusin to the wires
So when he removed the inner fender to get to the computer he tested the wires and on our sons car it turned out that there was a orange wire running to the computer that was corroded he simply cut a piece of the wire put it back together and the car has worked great since.
How his problem started was at first it would not idle - then it would stall - and was real slugglish. Most of the lights on the dash would come on - then eventually it would not go at all.
Thanks again y'all!
I can drive the car for a few blocks then when I'm stopped(usually) it will rev high.
As I try to get my car back home everytime I slow down to turn a corner or coming to a light it will stall.And I have to have the car in netural or it will just keep stalling the minute I take my foot off the brake to put it into drive.
My fuel pressure is fine.My throttle is not sticking.I had the map sensor changed.
Mech. said he checked for leaks in the hoses. I dont know what else to do I cant drive the car anymore.
Thanks!
Mark
everything is holding pressure, voltage is correct, have tried resetting the anti theft. turns over, and will not fire. changed the oil sending unit, as well. any other ideas??????? i am LOST.
Two days ago the check engine light came on. Yesterday, traveling at 65 mph, the car just quit running. I disconnected the battery leads and shorted them together, the car fired up, travelled 40 feet and died again. No other symptoms, just died. Now the car won't fire up.
Car has plenty of oil. No overheating. The only other thing wrong is two front tires that are out of balance, they cause the car to vibrate badly above 45 mph.
Is there a procedure to read OBD codes without a reader? Is there a specific procedure to reset the ECM/ECU? Where is the ECM/ECU located? Anyone had this same problem? Thanks.
P0141 O2 Sensor Heater Circuit Malfunction
P0300 Multiple random misfire
P0141 O2 Sensor Heater Circuit Malfunction
I cleared the codes, cycled the ignition key, no new codes, cranked the engine, no new codes.
The O2 Sensor is shiney new.
I also noticed that the Theft Protection light never goes out, is it supposed to and when?
I don't feel like the codes are helping. Any ideas are appreciated.
The problem: The car started fine, and would run, but around 2100 - 2500 rpm's it would start to miss- I would say it was like the car was trying to clear its throat. It wouldn't throw a check engine light for over a month, but it finally did- just a generic misfire code. No duh!
What we tried: New fuel filter, new spark plugs (gapped correctly), New Boots for the plugs- the 2.4 does not have wires, new coil packs, new tower/coil housing- up to this point nothing helped! Alright, what else can we do? Several new sensors (I honestly can't remember them all!) New Ignition Control Module. At this point I was so fed up with throwing money away I decided no more, I would just park the thing and drive my husbands truck. So that's what I did for two weeks, on a whim I decided to drive to my Mom's house, a mile away, to my surprise there was no miss, no throat clearing, it ran perfect! Could my prayers have been answered?!? Well, for a week they were, the car just ran perfectly! Slowly but surely though, it started messing up again, and it progressively got worse... Well, after talking it over with mechanic buddies and motor-head family members we decided that it sounded like I had a fuel pump problem, we needed to bite the bullet and put a new pump on it. ... ... ... After a couple nasty hours my husband came home, grease up to his elbows, tossed the keys on the table and said he was dumbfounded, had no clue what was wrong with the car. The fuel pump didn't fix a thing! Ahhh son of a gun! So much money spent, problem still not solved. I had one more mobile mechanic friend take a look at it, he did a compression check and everything was perfect, but this just wasn't making any sense. He did find that one of my spark plugs on cylinder 4 was white- could I have had a bad spark plug from when we had replaced it? We had got the AC Delco plugs, the real deal that everyone told us that we just had to get, but stranger things have happened. He replaced the plug and it ran great... for a couple hours... the funny thing was we figured out that it did run really great for those two hours, and again it had sit there for three days. So could there be something to it just sitting there and resetting something for it to run better like it did...
It all started to come together, could the ECM - the engine control module aka "the computer" be bad in this car? I've always heard computers are super expensive, and I didn't even want to think about how much that was going to cost. Well, we took a chance and went to the pull-a-part, found a computer off of a 2000 Chevy Cavalier, a 2.2L and honestly we didn't know if the 2.2 would work with a 2.4, but for $30 I took a chance.
The deal on the ECM - GM used the computers on several models, 2.2 and 2.4 Sunfires, Cavaliers, and more, so the numbers matched and it would work, but the deal is it has to be reflashed for the specific car, using your vin#. Trying to find someone to flash it was the hard part, but luckily we found that O' Reilly autoparts would do it for $75. It took them all of ten minutes to do it.
At first when we installed it the car wouldn't even start, so we thought we had a bad computer, that maybe it wouldn't work with my car after all, but luckily we found that you have to reset the anti-theft passcode by doing a long series of key turns to program the new password for the new computer. We did the song and dance and TAH FREAKIN DAH the car has worked perfectly since. It's running better now than it has in years!
Now, one might question, how does a computer just go bad? Well, I don't have a 100% answer for this, but some info that might just be a coincidence, but who knows... Before this all happened, we installed an after market radio, and for those of you who don't know this, the GM models that are 2000 and newer have somewhat of a brain inside the factory radio- it controls that anti-theft system, your door ajar chime and more. The typical wiring harness for "normal" pre-2000 aftermarket GM is only about $10 at your local wal-mart, but for this 2000-post harness, that also has a box attached to it that is supposed to take care of what the factory radio controls, it's almost $100! Best Buy wouldn't even sell it to me for fear of me suing them if something "went wrong." That might have should have been a red flag right there, but I wanted that aftermarket radio. We got the harness on our own, installed the radio, and it worked fine for a good while, but it started messing up, making a clicking noise when I would switch it from any other setting (tuner, auxilary, etc.) to CD. I even remember shutting the door and the door ajar chime still chiming away for a few minutes there after... For installing the new ECM you have to reference to that red light on the factory radio for resetting that anti-theft pass code. I mean I'm telling y'all this, I think that after market radio - mainly that wiring harness, is the culprit. Maybe I'm nuts, but I never had any trouble out of that car until after it was installed. I will say this, I have the old factory radio in there now, and there she will be, the CD player doesn't work but oh well. I'm not taking a chance, even though I sure do miss that HD radio feature, and MP3 CD's are the best for roadtrips! Who am I kidding a car that runs is the best for roadtrips!!!
If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask- I know how frustrating this can be, and if I can help one person that would just be wonderful! Good luck to everyone!!!