car broke again

[Jack_John_Mark]

FORD

Found On Road Dead

 

[Jack_John_Mark]

Need to get yourself a GM product with a 3.8L engine, irule.

Go find a Buick Park Ave or a LeSabre.

Bulletproof.

 

[{+}Mother-Marge{+}]

87/Dodge K- car,......one owner = mee....!

 

[mrwallace2ku]

One other thing I have had go bad and my car basically stop running was faulty O2 oxygen sensors. I replaced those and my car fired right back up and ran smoothly. O2 sensors will burn out because of ethanol fuel as well. Cheap fix of around 50 bucks depending on model.. First time I had an O2 sensor problem a car repair shop charged me 300 bucks to hook the damn car up to a diagnostic machine to locate the issue. The part itself only cost 25 bucks and basically screws into the exhaust manifold and has a sensor wire clipped onto it. Takes about 20 minutes to replace, maybe longer if you have two O2 sensors instead of one.

 

[Brasky]

FORD

Found On Road Dead

My stang runs just fine. Granted she's put away for thee winter

 

[Jack_John_Mark]

There are many a things that could be wrong when your car dies on you.

It's the little details that narrow down the list of potential issues though.

 

[Jack_John_Mark]

My stang runs just fine. Granted she's put away for thee winter

 

[Jack_John_Mark]

I still maintain that if you were driving down the road and your car just began slowly and gradually losing speed and now won't start, that you have an issue with the battery. Likely not the battery itself, but the battery has probably lost its charge.

If the pump started going bad or the fuel filter clogged up, your car should have started missing a bit and sputtering. If there was any fuel issue at all the car should have started missing.

The easiest and completely free way to check if this is the case is to take yourn mother's car and hook up the jumper cables. Try and start your car up. If it starts, now you know you have no fuel issues and this narrows the list down by a lot. And again, if it starts, I'd bet your alternator has failed you and the car should slowly die again.

Also, like I said, pop the hood and just make sure the belt to the alternator is still on. If it ends up being one of these issues it's real easy to fix and will save you money.

 

[mrwallace2ku]

^ Good stuff JJ

I was driving my truck last summer in high heat when the truck just died as I was driving...the truck began to hesitate while under acceleration THEN completely died. Turned out I had a fuel line that was collapsing on me under the high heat during the summer. Cooling hoses to the radiator will do the same thing as well when wearing out, but not leaking...resulting in over-heating issues. Replaced the worn out fuel line and was good to go.

Almost always something easy and usually electrical as you posted above.

 

[iruletheskool]

I tried the battery, im not 100% retarded

 

[Jack_John_Mark]

I tried the battery, im not 100% retarded

Well how am I supposed ta know about you city folk?

Last year when it was icy you sat there and spun out at the end of yourn driveway for an hour

 

[mrwallace2ku]

Under acceleration and then the car died skool? Sounds like a fuel starvation problem and maybe it is. Simply unhook the fuel line, crank the motor and see if the pump is working would be what I would start with. If your car has a fuel injection system, the fuel pressure is important as well.

Those O2 sensors have a lot to do with air/fuel mixture rates and when they go out, your car will not run. I usually "feel" the hesitation while under acceleration, which leads me to the O2 sensors. I did have a car that would not start because of a faulty O2 sensor as well (paid the 300 bucks to figure that one out).

Just solved an issue with hesitation issues in a Acura a few weeks back. Turned out to be bad plug wires. I will never buy a cheap set of those again in my life. I will only buy the most expensive set of plug wires now. Took me a year to finally figure that one out. I started by checking the inside of distributer cap for moisture-n-cracks and moved to the spark plugs for excessive wear. That lead to the plug wires and ultimately a fix. I was convinced it was a throttle body issue (500 buck fix)...thus the year to self diagnose the plug wires...point is it always turns out to be something much less costly and not as bad as one thinks.

 

[HuskerInSecLand]

I tried the battery, im not 100% retarded

Damn youngsters these days. Always looking for the easy way. They just never want to give 100% anymore.

 

[Jack_John_Mark]

I like fixing my own car. Don't like forking over way too much money for someone else to figure out something that I know I can.

Last summer my AC quit in my car. Not normally a real problem, because you just roll down your windows and suck it up. Except my windows suddenly wouldn't roll down either. So I knew right off the bat that I had a power distribution issue. Obviously the first thing I looked at was the fuses and how they're set up to distribute power. The AC and windows were on different fuses.....so this was confusing.

A couple nights later I was backing up and I realized I couldn't see shit behind me. My backup lights weren't working either. Interesting, I thought to myself. Looked again at the fuses......backup lights were on a different fuse as well.

I had a few problems. My car was a '94, so finding a wiring diagram was going to be difficult. I now lived in Omaha and I lived downtown so the only place I could park my car was right in the street. And it was 100 degrees out, so fixing it with no shade in the street with cars flying by honking at me was going to be difficult.

To hell with all that, I decided I'd do it anyways. Found a wiring diagram online written in Chinese, about 1,000 pages long. I went through this book over and over and over. Finally I found something that looked like it for the bill. 2 weeks after driving in my car 30 minutes to work and 30 minutes back with no AC or windows, dying of heat, I found it.

It was the ignition switch. Of all things. I took apart the steering wheel, removed the switch, and sure enough the wiring harness was melted in one spot......right where the one wire that distributes power to a set of fuses that happened to be the fuses that weren't working for me. Ordered a new switch for $4. Put it in and boom.

 

[Jack_John_Mark]

It turns out wiring in cars is a BITCH.

 

[HuskerInSecLand]

I used to like working on cars....Until I could afford to have some one else work on them.






















Then I found out, I hate working on cars!!

 

[Jack_John_Mark]

I had a mechanic tell me it would cost $300 just to diagnose my problem and then whatever else on top of that for labor.

I was like......bulllllshit. He said diagnosing electrical issues in cars are extremely difficult, and especially on the older ones.

So I fixed it for $4.

 

[iruletheskool]

Damn youngsters these days. Always looking for the easy way. They just never want to give 100% anymore.

Wat.





FYI: its a fuel pump issue, new problem is apparently its impossible to get at the fuel pump on a 03 grand am.. experts, pls tell me how to fix myself

 

[Jack_John_Mark]

You're gonna have to spend some money.

You're going to need a couple of jack stands and a jack. As well as a new fuel pump obviously. And some tools.

 

[Jack_John_Mark]