On friday I had to make the mighty 2 hour voyage from marquette to menominee(2 hrs). Up until that point I had only been driving it once a week to my auto class and back to work on it, so never on the highway. I probably put a total of 20 miles on it this winter. This spring I put on a 2.3 throttle body and new plug wires. The car ran and idled fine in town, but I never took it on the highway because of the haggard condition it was in. By last friday I was bone dry on fuel. I filled up 40 bucks worth at a shell station before leaving town. I hit highway speeds on the way to the gas station with no problems. Shortly after filling up my car started sputtering very badly. It was getting to the point where I couldn't accelerate beyond 10% throttle. I made it halfway home and when I went thru a city and hit stoplights, the car would barely idle. Somewhere between there and home it ran fine for a while, and then coming into menominee it started running like crap again. I limped it home and pulled the plugs. #3 is completely fouled and I have a check engine. I have to get the code checked, and I replaced the plugs with the copper champs today. I also seafoamed the car(just added thru the tank)and damn its a mess. The car is still running like garb and my exhaust is dripping out black. I am hoping that it is just from all the carbon build up. Its also smokey, but after searching I see that is a fairly common thing. I just don't understand why the car is still sputtering. Am I going to have to go thru this half tank of seafoamed gas with this crappy performance? Was it even bad gas in the first place? Am I just retarded? NEways, sorry for the rant, but I just wanted to include all of the variables that I could think of.

the black dripping out if u dont find oil on the spark plugs could be water condensation or ur gas has to much water in it from maybe a bad gas tank underground at the station and water got in which if u watch a vehicle that realy burns gas well like say a police car with douls on the intercepter watch as they pull away from a stop light water will literaly just pour from the exhaust tips im not sure if this is because of condensation of water in the pipes or if its just cause it burns the gas so good any moister in it is expelled out the exhaust but it could be a possibility in ur case of to much water in the gas or maybe

bad ---
fuel filter
fuel pump from running the tank dry it uses the gas for lube and to keep itself cool
fuel injecter "plugged up with gunk from not being drivin all winter something built up and finaly let loose"
coil(s)
02 sensor

and other items

cant realy tell till u get the code

number of things can cause ur problem

Are you getting a check engine light on? Whats the fouled #3 plug oil, coolant, white color? I would get the fuel filter replaced then run a bottle fuel stabalizer in youre fuel tank, See if anthing changes, Also you said you filled up at shell?. They common for crap gas, There is this one shell gas station, Near my house That always seems to be shady, I people always have problems there, Wouldnt hurt getting youre fuel pump tested as well. Could have a leaky injector,


Good Luck.

thanks for the help guys. I only have a quarter tank of the seafoam/gas left and it has gotten a lot better. My plug looked like carbon build up. After disconnecting the battery and driving again it was working great until I went wide open. After that, it started chugging a bit again. My idle was also pretty crazy, so I need to check the throttle body for a vacuum leak. Hopefully I find a vacuum leak where I think I will, and then when I put new gas in she'll run good again. I never got the engine light checked before I reset the computer, but if I get a light again I'll see what it says. again, thanks for the help.

[off topic] if you ever come down to the lower penn lemme know [/off topic]



"The Blue Bullet"

bringin this post back from the grave. I have the body almost done, so now I have time to get it running right. I tried scanning it yesterday and my obd port isn't working. I even tried 2 different scanners. I did a quick search and saw that the fuse for that sometimes goes out. I'm going to check my fuses today and give it another try. Any other reasons why it wouldn't work?

the fuse was bad. after scanning i got cyl 3 misfire and injector 3 control circuit. what part is the second code referring to?




Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Monday, June 04, 2007 8:37 PM