Please Help! $1300 Down The Drain & Still Not Running. 19

[Stephanie Huffman]

About two weeks ago, I was driving & punched the gas to pass someone. When the rpm hit 4, I felt a huge nudge & my car slowed down. Though I was going about 80, my car was only going about 60. I continued to drive home (about 2 miles.) As I slowed down, (following speed limits,) my car would not go as fast as it should be going. When I got the the traffic light right before my neighborhood, my car was smoking like crazy. I continued home after running the light... at this point, my car would only go about 5 mph. I pulled into the drive way & hopped out of my car. I could see a red glow on the driveway underneath my car so I ran & got the water hose & sprayed under my car. I was scared it was going to blow up. The entire time I was driving (after the nudge/jolt,) my car continued to jolt & my temperature gauge never raised.

My brother is a pretty good mechanic. Without looking at the car, he said the catalylic(spell check!) converters needed to be replaced. He said that they were probably clogged & when I gassed it, it caused a chunk to completely clog the converter. He said the "glow" could only be that of a catalylic converter that is overheated.

So I had it towed to a shop. 6 hours & $740 later, it was time to pick it up. When I got to the shop, a worker there was taking off to test drive it. He didn't go far & pulled back in with the car smoking... So they took the engine cover off & they were assessing what else could be wrong. He pulled the wires off of one side & noticed that only two of the four or five(?) were firing.

He then told us that it would $650 more dollars, as it needed the coils, caps, rotors, wires, & spark plugs replaced.

I called my brother & he said to get it towed to his house... he could fix all of that for way cheaper. So thats what I did...

When replacing the rotors, the one on the right was completely ate up. There were plastic shavings all in there. Instead of being about 4 inches in diameter, it was about 1.5.

He replaced everything that they said needed to be replaced. He tried to start it... which it started at first, but sounded terrible... even sounding like its going to die.

So my dad decided to have a friend of a friend try to fix it. So the car was towed to his house/shop. Now that guy is saying that it is the injectors???

Anybody have a clue if that sounds like it may be the problem??? What about the o2 sensors??? The shop that replaced the catalylic converters didn't replace those.

PLEASE HELP!!!!

[landar]

It really sounds like a coil went bad. That would produce the glowing cat and rough running and is a fairly common problem. Did your brother actually replace the coils?

[Stephanie Huffman]

Yes sir... He replaced both rotors, caps, coils, all the wires, spark plugs (8,) & the belt (not needed but we bought it a couple months ago so he went ahead & replaced it while he had the opportunity.

[landar]

Yes sir... He replaced both rotors, caps, coils, all the wires, spark plugs (8,) & the belt (not needed but we bought it a couple months ago so he went ahead & replaced it while he had the opportunity.

Well, at least you are learning a valuable lesson on car repair. The "shotgun" approach of replacing parts in the hopes of hitting the root cause is a no-no unless you have all kinds of money to flush. You need someone to again be very methodical in checking spark. Make sure that both banks are now sparking AND that the timing is correct. With so many parts being replaced at once, it is not impossible that another issue was introduced. If you do have proper spark, then you can focus on the fuel system.

[SRK]

I'm with Landar - one of the ignition wires or other new parts was wrongly installed and that's why it's running rough now.

The sad part is you did not need new converters, and you sure as hell don't need injectors now. If the O2 sensors don't pop a code, they're fine too.

One coil was maybe faulty, and it sounds like a distributor cap and rotor were in bad shape, and perhaps bad enough that they acted like a bad coil.

What you need is a mechanic.

[billydpowell]

WHY? have you not said anything about what codes it is showing...

you need an ODB 2 code reader...