About 40,000 miles ago, I had the engine rebuilt because I was too busy and tired with work to do a simple refill of the oil. Yes. Stupid. Anyway.
After I got the car back, it was a little jerky on the throttle when driving. I would be at 3000rpm stable and it would feel like the engine would lose power and then regain power. It always felt more stable when I was putting in enough gas to make the car accelerate. And when there car was coming to a stable speed, the car would lose power again; after that, I would hold the accelerator in the same spot and as the car slowed, the car eventually jerked forward again and power returned. After power returned, it would happen again and again.
I had the computer codes printed and the car was reporting misfires on cylinders 2 and 3.
It started to get worse. The car would sometimes die when I pulled it out of gear to coast to a stop (also around corners sometimes). I would put the car into 2nd gear and pop the clutch to get it started. At that point, the car ran EXTREMELY rough like it was only running on 3 cylinders and it had something like half the power. I could then kill the engine with the key, and then restart it with the key and it would run OK for a little bit longer. But, sometimes I would start it with the key and it would be running rough like before.
I had the plugs, wires, and coil replaced at my mechanic, who also told me that the catalytic converter needs to be replaced according to my computer. He said that unburnt fuel has destroyed it. I didn't think he knew the correct reason for why the car was doing that in the first place (it was running strangely even after the rebuild), so I didn't replace the cat.
The wires, plugs, and coil being replaced, it ran a little bit better, but a few days afterward, it started again. Now, it always runs rough and coughs at the lower RPMs and runs OK at the higher RPMs.
When idling, the car will be around 300 rpms and automatically can go as high as 800, but then the car wiggles back and forth side to side. Eventually the car returns back to 300 rpms on its own.
Another thing I can do is slowly press the accelerator and watch the RPMs increase. When the RPMs get near 1500, they shoot up to about 2800 very quickly and the engine then sounds fine. When I take my foot away, it goes back to running rough. It follows the same pattern on the road. Until I reach about 1500 RPMs, the engine is rough and jerky, but after 1500, it sounds and runs fine.
Additional data: I thought I smelled unburnt fuel around the car after letting it idle for a minute.
Additional data: Another thing that happened was when I was accelerating hard and taking the RPMs up to 4500 one time (very rarely these days with these problems), the car seemed to have a misfire and it hiccuped for an instant and then kept going.
Additional data: 4 or 5 times since the rebuild 2 years ago, the car has started up with white smoke coming out the back end.
I'm pretty sure the catalytic converter needs to be replaced, but I don't want to replace it and then have it ruined again because the basic problem wasn't corrected.
Please help! ;-)
Best,
Christopher
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Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 AT 5:45 PM
