car trouble!!!!
 

Hey Guys,
My car was running fine lastnight when I came home.
This morning when I started my car I expected a little hesitation because of how cold it was.
Enter my problem: when I started to drive I realized that the car would struggle (rough idle, bad acceleration)
On my way home I decided to add some gasline antifreezing hoping that that would help.
The car started to run fine but the problem continued after a little while.
It goes fine for a stretch then it happens all over again.

quick summary :

- rough idel
- bad acceration on low RPMS
- gets jumpy in higher RPMS
- car feels like its choking and not enough gas is getting to the motor.

please if anyone can offer their opinion, it would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance !!!!

dirty fuel filter ?

check your sparkplug cables, one might have come loose?

check sparks/plugs/fuel filter?

I'll check the spark plug wires, but wonder why they would come loose if thats the problem.
how much to get a fuel filter changed???

thanks guys!!!

any other ideas??

The plug wires could have popped loose on the dizzie cap.. happened to one of our members on the highway while cruising to St. Thomas. :D However since you said it runs fine for a while then becomes sluggish, i don't think this is what happend.

Fuel filter you can change yourself, takes a couple minutes with basic hand tools. It's about $30 from honda for the filter.

is it a messy job, will i get gass all over the place?
so you guys think that those are the two main things that i should check eh ?

cool I'll do it all tomorrow and get back to you on the outcome.

thanks !

Is your check engine light on? If so, I would get it checked out. Another possibility is a bad MAP sensor but if that was the case, the ECU should be throwing a code. I guess the fuel filter change wouldn't hurt regardless.

Mark

Yes, you will get gas everywhere, but don't worry, just don't smoke while working on it. I just did a filter change on another car, the damn filter was so rusted it was leaking :eek: Just needed a quick release line tool, and it took 10 minutes to do. Your problem could be any number of things...I wouldn't even know where to start w/o looking at the car first, and driving it. So out of fear of being dead wrong, I can't say. The fuel filter would be a luck guess though....that's one of about 50 different things that would cause such behaviour. Also, is there a savage decrease in power? This would indicate running on 3 cylinders...

yeah theres next to no power coming at all from it ..... but i mean there are moments where the car runs fine.

Ya, one of your cylinders is not getting either spark or fuel. Sooooo....find out which one. Start the car and remove a spark plug wire (don't shock yourself now...) Use a boot puller, or at least some thick rubber gloves. If the engine dies, that one is good. Do this till you find that you have removed a spark plug wire, but the damn thing still runs the same. This is your problem cylinder. Then take an extra spark plug and stick it in the wire, give the body of the plug an engine ground and try it...see if you get spark. If so, remove the plug from the cylinder and SMELL IT. :) Do you smell gasoline, and is the plug wet. If so, replace the spark plug with a new, gapped plug, and try to start the engine. It should run. If you got NO SPARK, on the first test, then you should test your plug wire for 11,000 ohms of resistance at least. If that checks out, then you need to get into the distributor cap and so on.... Now, if there WAS spark, but you did NOT smell fuel on the plug you pulled out, then you need to get a NOID light for testing your injectors...unplug the injector harness and insert the Noid light in there. If it lights like it's supposed to, then your injector is getting a signal. Reattach the harness, and have an assistant crank the car while you feel the injector. The injector should pulse like it's got a fookin heartbeat :) If it pulses, it's good, if not, you have a bad injector. You can try to clean it with carb cleaner, but in all likelyhood, a dead injector is a dead injector. Go to a junker and grab yourself a new rail and injectors....

Of course, this is all assuming your car's fuel system in all up to par, and in fact, it is running on three cylinders. If, however, you have described the problem incorrectly, and the car actually runs on all 4, but runs like crap, then it would be a whole different procedure. Like I said, I'd really have to be there.... :shrugs:

you wanna drive up to windsor ?
j/k
hey man thanks for the help !
but its too cold for me to do all this so I'm going to take it into a shop and hope that the problem is either only the plugs or the fuel filter.
I'll let you know thanks BB !!

k, no prob....tell us what the culprit was.

what bruno said......

my car was doing the same thing, and it was my spark plug wires

if you have after market plug wires..... DEFINATLY check them

good luck

where would the fuel filter be on a 98 hatch

It would be the black thingy (that's a techical term :) ) on the firewall immediately towards the driver's side next to the battery, the one with a rubber hose that goes to the fuel rail. (Hose says "fuel" on it or something in red letters).

Hey Guys,
Just got back from my mechanic.
We did compression tests on the car and thought it might have been the wires and plugs, so we replaced those with MSD wires and NGK R plugs.
he even readjusted my valves for me.
After starting it up the car still seemed to be idleing rough.
He tested it by pulling each sparkplug wire out
(like you said to bbarbulo) and realized that the engine wasn't reacting when one of the wires got pulled.
So yadda yadda yadda, to make an already long story short, we ended up changing on injector.
My mechanic said it was wierd how only one injector would go on me like that.
anyhow everything is honkey dorey now.

thanks for all your adveice guys !!!!

Good stuff, glad to hear that your problem got solved Tony! :thumbup:

good to hear tony!!!! :)
i'd have replaced all 4 at once if they were reasonablly cheap. just to worry bout one less thing :)

thanks guys!
i paid quite a bit for everything i did today but i look at it as if I did a major tune up.
i also found out today that i have been running a straight pipe.
so up next is a cat back exhaust system with a cat.