Mysterious Engine and Trans. Problems

joyrider147

As you know, my car has a valve tapping problem. I remedied it with some fluid designed to stop valve tapping. Although I bought a quart, I only used 1/2 of it along with 4 1/2 quarts 5w30 (it said to use 1 quart of fluid in place of 1 quart of oil). I also put the thermostat back into my car for winter, and the electric fan was purposely hotwired to continously run to prevent overheating.

As for my car, it now resumes tapping 1 MONTH after oil change and anti-valve tapping fluid added. Also, it now overheats and the digital dashboard may or may not display acurate temperature information. And although it ran rough without the help of the engine regulation computers, THE CAR CONTINUED TO RUN AFTER IGNITION TURNED OFF!

Now, my car bangs the gears when shifting: the auto parts salesman said my modulator is need of replacing. Is this true?

What is wrong and what needs to done to stop the car from destroying itself??? If you can help me, thanks very much.

zueslewis

and it's because your ignition timing is off.

Bear in mind that an oil additive IS NOT going to repair your car, no matter what the guys at Pep Boys say. If you have valves tapping, the only cure is a proper repair. Additives may prolong the wait for failure, but that's it.

If you have pinging, your timing is at fault, there, too.

zueslewis

at the auto parts store, but he hasn't performed any real diagnosis, probably isn't qualified to perform any diagnosis (he wouldn't be working the auto parts counter if he was) and you shouldn't spend your money without knowing for sure.

AAMCO and other transmission places offers free diagnosis - at least you'd have someone who is qualified give you more direction.

I really dislike the parts counter diagnosis. Real mechanics don't go to the parts stores and talk to the counter guy - they call and have parts delivered. The ONLY people parts counter guys talk to are do-it-yourselfers who are making the same guesses as everyone else or people who have no clue to begin with and ask the parts counter guy. Either way, you're using about a 90% chance that you're wasting your money by taking their advice.

Mr_Shiftright

I think the entire approach to this car is not so good, from the "repairs in a can" to the idea of hotwiring the cooling fan.

Now I realize you may not be able to afford lavish repairs and so I'm not putting you down for doing what you have to do out of necessity, but really, if you can afford to deal with the car in a proper manner, you should find a good mechanic and then take a step by step approach to solving these problems one by one in terms of priority.

The hard shifting and "dieseling" (post-ignition) may be related to a very high idle speed. The overheating is another issue entirely, and the valve tapping another issue after that.

So I'd suggest a "battle plan" for this car. So far it sounds like you are distributing your resources haphazardly and you may not be focusing on any one problem enough to fix that one problem.

cutehumor

I read from the previous topic that you bought the car recently. The previous owner probably sold the car because of these problems your describing. This is an old car. Everything your describing sounds like the result of the car getting older and everything going down hill. Engine and transmission problems. The only way to repair the valve tapping is to have a mechanic take a look at it. Oil additives are snake oil, they don't work. I wouldn't go with the parts counter person advice about the modulator. He's just guessing and may be motivated to sell your parts than fixing the actual problem. If you go to a trans shop like Aammco, just get a diagnosis done. They are often anxious to rebuild the transmission at an expensive price.

bburton1

Do a web search on AAMCO before spending any money with these people.

zueslewis

not repairs at AAMCO - I don't recommend repairs at AAMCO - just another rip off chain.

Also, post #5 - that's exactly what I said, isn't it? There's no law against plagerism in a chat site, but there's no need to copy someone for credit or whatever - that's strange.

joyrider147

Ok, now that I had placed a little bit of fluid into the oil it stopped tapping (only doing this because rip off mechanics want $2,000 for a valve job on an 1,300 dollar car) and a little 50/50 anti-freeze mix into the radiator stopped the overheating.

now, as for the dieseling and incorrect ignition timing, how did that go bad? so far, it hasn't done it today, but it happens when the car overheats or if you leave the a.c. on and shut it off 1 second before shutting the car off- but i'm not using a.c. and never had for 2 years. Was this because i put the wrong spark plug wire on the wrong cylinder? How can I fix it myself properly because this is the only car i have and i need it to be as tip top condition as possible but i also need to get to work.

as for hotwiring the fan, all that was bypassing the sensor to activate it and placed it on the power lines. i don't know where that was done because my mechanic did it and i can't find those wires.

thanks for letting me know. by the way, how do you guys winterize a car and maintain the heating and a.c. so it is "monster" hot heat or ice cold a.c. in a jiffy? is there anything else i can do to stop winter from breaking this car?

Mr_Shiftright

Hotwiring the cooling fan is not good because the fan was not meant to run all the time. It will just wear out sooner.

Post-ignition, or dieseling, could very well be related to overheating, as the interior of the engine gets so hot that perhaps pieces of carbon glow red hot even after the engine is shut down. So the carbon serves as a spark plug and keeps the engine running.

swschrad

and I have no problems in hotwiring a cooling fan. trouble is, their sensors are wired to keep the fan running on a hot engine after you turn it off, and you can't duplicate that easily, so you still have a stress factor of the engine decay heat spiking on some sensitive machines to a point that can lead to head issues.

sometimes you do what you gotta do... had a neighbor in the early 80s with a fiat, and they couldn't get parts, usual story with that product line. so they called me over, and I jumpered the fan on with the ignition until they got enough orders in Italy for a parts run, and shipped a relay two months later. saved the car.

speedshift

Anyone notice that he had the thermostat out? That's usually a quick fix for a bad radiator. Maybe boiling or rodding the radiator would solve some of his grief.

As for running on, turning off the engine in gear can be a quick fix until you find someone to turn down the idle speed, if that's the problem. I like Shifty's idea of hot carbon in the combustion chambers firing the mixture after the ignition is off. If the coolant's too hot it isn't cooling the combustion chambers. Maybe everything is related to a bad radiator.

But that wouldn't explain the hard shifting. Maybe we're back to the idle speed too high--or initial timing advanced, raising the idle?

Joyrider, your comment about plug wires makes me think you did a tune-up recently. Did you adjust the idle speed or rotate the distributor? It sounds like the car just started doing this.

Mr_Shiftright

I didn't have a problem with hot-wiring the fan motor, I had a problem with the idea that this "fixed" the overheating.

Running without a thermostat also can cause problems, and ironically, even contribute to overheating. If the car design allows lots of water to run quickly through the radiator, with a missing thermostat the water won't have any time to exchange its heat in the radiator.

These are all mickey mouse solutions and are probably killing the car slowly rather than saving it I fear. Death is inevitable if this is how the problems are being approached, IMHO.

Of course, as John Wayne used to say "Sometimes a man's gotta DO what a man's gotta DO", but if you have a few hundred bucks, stop your mechanic from playing Dr. Frankenstein and have him, or someone, fix this car right.

swschrad

I bet it was just tinkering without manual, "grampa said he never had trouble with a car that DIDN'T have a thermostat and heater, so I took 'em out" kind of tinkering.

1) get a handyman manual specific for your vehicle, haynes and chilton are the two common brands. it's about 20 bucks.

2) read through the whole thing some evening or weekend, put some tape flags or Post-Its at places where they talk about issues you are having.

3) there should be some diagnosis trees (does the car start? yes-A no-B... does it overheat? yes-A no-B) for some issues. if they exist, do things and test things in the order given.

4) if it says a test is needed to determine if a part has failed, don't just blindly replace the thing, do the test. save yourself a lot of money by not throwing parts at things that are not broken yet.

5) if you need parts, get good ones, not creepy thin slop that fell onto the dock when the pier cop was not around. if the counter guys say "it's a dealer part" and the dealer says "ten thousand dollah, please," consider junkyard pulls. they can't be worse, and if they are, you can take it back for another one. you can't do THAT with new parts most of the time.

6) if you decide to NOT do your own work, that's OK too... but at least you'll have an idea what MIGHT be at issue, instead of being one of those who go in and say "it makes a funny noise and the temp gauge is HOT all the time and I have three credit cards." you can discuss the history and make the service writer think you will figure out any unneeded ripoff work.

good luck.

opera_house_wk

Where the faster a bad idea comes at you the better it sounds? Or is it Testicle's Deviant to Thudd's Law of Thermodynamics? Water going too fast through a radiator to loose heat! At least that wasn't the case when I attended Dr. Bellow's Pneumatic Institute. Heat transfer is basically a function of the temperature differential, all other things being equal. The added turbulence of the higher flow will actually increase the heat loss by reducing the boundary layers in the tube. The water may initially come out hotter, but you have lost more "heat." This is the second time I have heard this on the board. We shouldn't be promoting bad science like in the movies. Someone might just believe it.

joyrider147

No, I didn't have the engine tuned up since my mechanic NEVER WANTS TO CHECK MY CAR, SO I HAVE TO TAKE IT TO A GARAGE. How do you reduce engine idle speed or rotate the distributor MANUALLY, not COMPUTERIZED??

With the mechanics, I try to fix this car with a chilton service manual. The post-ignition stopped for now, but does it in the summer with the a.c.- i guess as a safety measure to decompress the a.c. before shutdown. The temperature runs a little hotter than the old thermostat because I had that changed a few years ago, but it pretty much in norm.

The only problems I have is the over-rev, and oil dropping pressure problem. With the radiator, I did flush it out a while ago, but i didn't flush it out with a hose because i live in an apartment.

Somebody said many cars build in the 1980s til now have been more complicated than ever and cars with aluminum engines have been called "tight engines" which you must do EXACTLY to vehicle specifications or the car kills itself. Is there any types of mickey mouse or tinkering solutions to FIX THE CAR RATHER THAN DESTROY IT???

These damn electronics in cars make single repairs into defusing a bomb. If there was a way to find out what parts in a car i need and ones i don't, i'd rather chop shop the car and throw out all the useless parts.

zueslewis

Have you asked someone to check your car or inspected things for yourself?

swschrad

yes, things are a lot more complicated than they used to be. if you're working with a manual, you're on the right track.

"high idle" on computerized cars is sorta dependent on the sensors working correctly. because there isn't any manual way to change timing on anything run with a "spark pickup sensor" putting pulses out every time a cam wheel (mine is on the harmonic balancer) puts another tooth in view of an electronic geegaw mounted right nearby. some old GMs used to have a toothed wheel and a pickup inside the distributor tower, and these can be timed a little bit by rotating the distributor... provided you disconnected and plugged a bunch of vacuum advances and stuff.

if you're running hot, I'd say fix that first, it can warp the heads.

somebody is going to have to scope the engine electronics, I suspect, to find the idle issues. there are meter readings that you can take off some sensors to see if they're in range that are in the handyman manuals, but sensors overlap a bit, where if the outputs of two tell the computer to rich up the engine, then the 0-2 sensor will indicate rich, and so on.

one place to look might be on the exhaust manifold. there is a non-sensored flow valve for EGR, and sometimes there is an idle air control valve on a manifold that is similar, and if they get bound up with gunk or carbon they can affect performance. it's a pretty easy pull if needed... make sure there is vacuum there, the vacuum pull does move an actuator, and that it's not bound or scraping due to goop. if it is, clean or replace.

speedshift

What kind of world is it when you need to be a rocket scientist to keep your Cimarron on the road?

swschrad

relax, and enter the wondrous parlors of ProgressWorld! you have no choice. today we are pleased to offer you three dolts on the phone who can't make a shop appointment if they were watched by the boss. tomorrow, the service adviser drops his coffee cup on your upholstery, his pencil down your air intake, and his pants when the boss calls and asks if he's moved any shocks yet today.

ProgressWorld! -- where not only the car controls are messed up....

I need a weekend...

speedshift

It was hard enough keeping my Falcon running, and it only had maybe five moving parts.

What's $1300 equivilent to in 1970 dollars, $250? The problem with $1300 cars is that they need the same maintenance as $13,000 cars.

Maybe joyrider is right after all--just drive the beaters into the ground. The days when $25 and a few hours of unskilled labor would get you back on the road 90% of the time seem to be long gone.

q45man

Maybe cars will be developed [in the future] to put owners out of their misery. Failure to maintain will be a capital crime and the car will execute you. Seems fair to me.

swschrad

first it was black helicopters, then it was Looney Bin Wacko and his merry men racing to get me before the => KILLER TIRES! <= tm could, now it's proposed that my car execute me if I don't change the taillight bulb right away when it fails.

lordy, folks, we need to take this country B A C K! rise with me, and we will conquer!!

just don't we be arguing what we are taking back FROM and going TO, that will call my leadership into question -- folks might disagree, and I'm not saying :-D

Mr_Shiftright

Okay, I'll back off any challenge to my knowledge of the Laws of Thermodynamics, which is near Zero.

Let me re-frame my views on removing a thermostat to try and get closer to real science.

Removing a thermostat will not make an overheating engine run cooler. All this does is make the actual overheat take a little longer.

speedshift

Doesn't it keep the engine at less than its normal operating temperature, increasing wear and sludge?

Mr_Shiftright

It might do that on a car that isn't normally overheating, but it's not going to "cure" an overheat, as whatever is boiling the water will continue to do so.

If the thermostat is stuck, however, yes, removing it will cure that problem!