| Subject: | hesitation when cold |
| Question: | I have a 1989 Dogde
Colt station wagon with a 1.5 liter fuel injection engine, basically,
the whole car is built by Mitsubitsi. The milage of the car is over
176,000 miles. Recently, if I start to drive when the engine is cool,
especially in the morning, the car hesitates and bucks, I have to slowly
accelerate to aviod the hesitation and the bucking, during this time,
when I stop at the red light, I can feel the engine jerks once in a
while, it looks like one of the cylinder misfires or not fire at all.
(or more than one cylinders, for that matter). It takes about 15 minutes
or so, before it runs well. Another symtom ( may be they are related?). After the car has completely warmed up, If I let it idles for about 10 minutes, than I press the gas pedal to race the engine, a buff of blue smoke comes out from the tail pipe. About 3-4 months ago ( 4000-5000 miles ago), that was before the above symtom appears, I replace the spark plugs ( not the wire though), the air filter and the distributor rotor, in addition, I put a bottle of fuel injector cleaner. I am a DIY guy, that is why I can keep the car for such a high mileage. Please give me some advices. |
| Answer: | Patrick, Your bucking problem is most likely due to dirty intake components. I would advise getting several cans of carborator cleaner from your local auto parts store, and thoroughly clean the following items: - throttle body (and elbow if it has a seperate one) - upper intake manifold - EGR valve Also, replace your PCV valve if you haven't done it this year. Those
are cheap and I replace mine every other oil change. The misfiring feeling
can be caused by these dirty parts or carbon build up on the intake valves.
If you want to clean your intake valves, you can follow these instructions: Blue smoke escaping from your tail pipe typically means you are leaking
oil past your valve seals. The only real way to stop this is to get a
valve job done; which means pulling the head off your engine and replacing
all the seals. That is a very time consuming job if you DIY, and very
expensive if you have a mechanic do it. But with an engine that has 176,000
miles on it, if you're burning a quart or less of oil every 1000 miles,
that's not bad. Just keep an eye on your oil level and make sure it doesn't
get too low. |