Whenever I stop or slow down to turn, there is a slight engine hesitation and the smell of gasoline

LONGSENIOR

MEMBER
2000 CHEVROLET MALIBU
6 CYL
FWD
AUTOMATIC
83,600 MILES

Lately whenever I stop or slow down to turn, there is a slight engine hesitation and the smell of gasoline through the vents, and sometimes the engine shakes. However if I give it gas it runs ok. It does run well on the highway with no gas odor. My mechanic thinks it may be clogged fuel injectors and I poured fuel injector cleaner in the tank twice and switched to premium gas. The problem still remains although it seems a bit better. Probably unrelated; the temperature guage runs a bit wild from hot to cool. The reservoir is full and cap is on tight. Now today I noticed I have no heat at all.

Thanks in advance for your help.

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

I don't think this is an injector issue. More than likely this is a purge valve is stuck open and it is just dumping vapor in the intake when it should not be.

Basically, this is causing the engine to run too rich, and it normally causes an issue when the throttle blades are closed because this is the time that there is the smallest amount of air coming in and if there is too much fuel from the evap emission system then it is going to cause the engine to hesitate and even stall at times.

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/engine-hesitates

I am attaching the info from the manual on replacing this which is what I would do.

Basically, when you remove it, check to see if there is any chalk looking substance inside of it. If there is then you more than likely have raw fuel in the charcoal canister which breaks the charcoal down.

Please let us know what questions you have. Thanks

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