Hey
I have a 1998 Pontiac sunfire convertable. It has the 2.4 liter engine and an automatic transmission. The car has been running good since I bought it a month ago from my uncle. It has about 165k miles on it and at 150k my uncle had replaced the timing chain, head gasket and alot of other stuff. It's been pretty well maintained, oil changes regularly and so on. Well the car developed a miss a few weeks ago. Only sometimes it'd sputter but it'd stop after a little while. Well saturday night I went out in the car to go to a party. As I was leaving the car starts missing, except now it was worse and is doing it all the time. It's so bad I was topped out at 55mph. I only lived a few miles away, so I eased it back to my house and started looking under the hood. Oil/coolant/tranny fluid all is well. I pulled the plugs and the 2 left are soaked in what looks like oil and gas. I figure they are the two that aren't firing. I did a compression test to see what they looked like. From left to right it read 170, 130,150,145. The 1st one seemed kinda high to me but it had compression so it should be going. I cleaned up the plugs and bought some new wires, if thats what you want to call them.I went and bought 1 new coil for the left side of the engine (1 coil per 2 cylinders). Still ran terrible, so i switched the coils left to right and it is still running terrible. I really am stumped on this one. If anyone has any input please feel free to reply.
Craig
I also forgot, the SES light came on and it's flashing. I know that when the ses is flashing that means it is missing.
this is my daily driver and i need it fixed quick.. I just walked in from testing to see which cylinders were sparking. I cut an old spark plug wire from a sbc to test and got an old plug. The 2 middle ones are firing great but the first and last one are getting nothing. What could cause this? Tommorow im going to try and borrow my friends obdII scanner to see if I cant get any codes.
thanks
If you replaced the coils and wires. I would say it would be you computer is shot or your harness is shot.
wires on a 2.4L?
did you replace the coil housing, boots and springs? The coil housing is very likely bad.
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</a>Scott Heflin, President Team Forward Motion <a href="http://www.teamforwardmotion.com" target="_blank">TFM </a>
i didnt replace the coil housing, or boots, or the springs. how much do these cost and do they sell at the regular parts store?
So i tested the coil housing today with a volt meter. it's all getting connections. I unplugged the cam shaft position sensor and cranked it and it was running exactly the same so im beginning to think thats the problem.
well i changed the camshaft position sensor. still runs like crap. im lost...
The numbers you got on your compression test aren't good at all. 170 isn't high, it's normal. Are you threading the tester into the plug holes all the way? Try running the test again (don't forget to unplug your fuel pump relay) and see what you get. With the results you got the first time, it sounds to me like bad valves. You can take off your intake manifold and watch as you get someone to crank the engine to get a bit of an idea if the valves are shot, but the only real way to tell would be to take the head off and take it to a machine shop to get tested.
That's an expensive route though, hope it's not internal.
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okay i ran the codes. came up for the cam sensor and crank sensor also got a misfire code. looks like the crank sensor must be the culprit
Okay this is very advanced and usually I charge $95 you dia a car but here goes. Use your Snap-on voltage tester an see if the ign fuse in the fuse box is recieving power then email me.
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