Been having idling issues, cleaned the EGR valve, seemed to help some, cleaned the IAC solenoid, did not seem to do much though it was dirty. Decided to give seafoam a shot, now the car runs even worse. I followed the instructions in the how to section on all three, they were a lot of help. It sputters throughout acceleration, thought maybe the plugs went bad, changed them with NGK 5464 Iridiums, wires are only a couple of months old same with the coils. The car is an automatic with 127k on it. This is happening with the AC off and in drive. Changing the plugs did not fix it, the CEL flashes 28 times then stays on for a short bit then flashes the same amount again, don't know if that matters. Any thoughts?
Flashing CEL, please help.
- Thread starter brett02
- Start date
justanothermp5
Banned
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- Rust Bucket
um if its flashing u really shouldnt drive it if u can avoid it....but yea do what he^ said and then go from there
justanothermp5
Banned
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- Rust Bucket
yea that worked out great!
Yeah it was kind of a pain in the butt to clean it, not much to get in there and really clean it good, it looked better when I got done but still did not look that great. I thought about replacing it anyway. Thank you for that information, did not realize that those two items were that common to go out, I am on my thrid set of coils though.
If you've been driving your car around with the CEL flashing that many times, I predict two things will happen:
1. The code you have now will come up as P0300 - random misfire. It's probably your ignition coils, but check to make sure.
2. Because you've driven it while it misfired, in a week or two your CEL will come back on solid, with a code of P0421 - warmup catalyst efficiency below threshold. Basically this means that your catalytic converter is dead, caused by the misfires that you got while driving (basically, unburnt gas gets dumped into the cat, which kills it in short order).
I hope I'm wrong, but I just wanted to give you a heads up.
So, checked the code, came up a PO303, cylinder 3 misfire, swaped the coils around to see if it was a coil, after clearing the code of course, code came up with the same PO303, and since I had just changed the plugs last night the only thing left were wires, even though they were only a couple to three months old. Changed the wires out and it is now fixed, no CEL, no sputtering, the idle issue is now taken care of. Yes!
Good call slavrenz.
I only drove it for a short distance with the flashing CEL, less than a mile, as I have read on this forum many of times not to drive with the flashing CEL. Had to drive it just a couple blocks to make it come on after swaping the coils, and up the road a quarter mile or so after doing the seafoam. Hopefully with that short distance I should be okay, plus I have the second cat gutted with the spark plug non-fouler done to it. However I had this code pop up last week, but the car only hesitated a little, the CEL did not flash, was just on, threw some Lucas fuel injector cleaner in it and the light went away a day later. It wasn't until right after doing the seafoam that it started acting like this, and it was bad.
Thank you everyone for your help.
Good call slavrenz.
I only drove it for a short distance with the flashing CEL, less than a mile, as I have read on this forum many of times not to drive with the flashing CEL. Had to drive it just a couple blocks to make it come on after swaping the coils, and up the road a quarter mile or so after doing the seafoam. Hopefully with that short distance I should be okay, plus I have the second cat gutted with the spark plug non-fouler done to it. However I had this code pop up last week, but the car only hesitated a little, the CEL did not flash, was just on, threw some Lucas fuel injector cleaner in it and the light went away a day later. It wasn't until right after doing the seafoam that it started acting like this, and it was bad.
Thank you everyone for your help.
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Then you won't get the P0421 code. Your front cat may still be bad (I had a coil go bad on me and only about 1 to 1-1/2 miles of driving after my CEL started flashing killed my cat), but since your O2 sensor is so far out of the exhaust stream, you won't be able to tell unless you remove the nonfouler for a few weeks.
Good luck!
slavrenz-
So should I worry about the front cat? Besides waiting for the CEL to come on for the front cat how else can I check to make sure its not bad? Are you suggesting that I take out the spark plug non-fouler, from the second cat, for a couple of weeks? If I do that the CEL is sure to come on and give me the code for that cat because there is nothing in it. Guess I am a little confused on what next.
So should I worry about the front cat? Besides waiting for the CEL to come on for the front cat how else can I check to make sure its not bad? Are you suggesting that I take out the spark plug non-fouler, from the second cat, for a couple of weeks? If I do that the CEL is sure to come on and give me the code for that cat because there is nothing in it. Guess I am a little confused on what next.
Well, you said you had the second cat gutted (I assume you mean the cat underneath the car). This one is not monitored. Basically, a misfire usually fouls up the cat near the manifold by coating the 3 metals (palladium, rhodium, and platinum) with gasoline. A "bad" cat won't hurt your car unless the substrate overheats and begins to fall apart and clog your exhaust. I doubt this will happen in your case, so the only thing you'd gain by removing the nonfouler would be to see if you're hurting the environment. If you're not having any more driveability problems and you don't care about hurting nature's critters (doughpoke with more pollutants (doesn't make any difference to me - I'm not judging you or anything
), then I wouldn't worry about doing anything.I was thinking about changing out the cat eventually with a Magnaflow high flow cat, just at the time I did not have the money and I was getting that code, P0421, so I just gutted it. But the car is running great right now, still have a couple of other things, struts and a pulley that is squealing really loud, to fix and should be good to go. Thanks again for your help.
Well, I thought that I had this thing fixed. The flashing CEL was fixed with a new set of wires, however the idle problem is still present. I just purchased a new EGR valve and put it on. The idle is bouncing from 500-600 down to 100-200 almost wanting to die, doesn't though. The only thing that I can think of how is replacing the UAC solenoid and/or the coils. Any ideas? It is not constant enough to be a vacum leak.
Oh yeah with AC on or off.
Oh yeah with AC on or off.
Ok, so going through some more things to eliminate as the problem, I cleaned the MAF, with MAF cleaner, cleaned some of the connectors, with the CRC electri cleaner spray, and changed the coils. Now the car is dead, no power, like the battery is dead, but the battery is not very old, not even a year. I jumped started it, but as soon as I try to go the car just shuts off. Any ideas? Please help. (bang)
I don't think the pro will run with a dead battery. I jumped mine, let it charge a lil and went for a test drive. I neglected to fully tighten the battery terminals and a bump from an uneven road left me stranded on the side of the road. The battery cables did not pop off but having the battery lose its connection for a second was enough to kill the car. I would have the battery tested and replaced if needed then let us know how it does.
I went through and double checked all of the connections, they were good, but same as you the battery cable was loose, and full of crud too. Cleaned it off and noticed that even with the bolt tightened all the way, it was still loose. Going to buy a new terminal to replace, I just took it for a test drive after cleaning it all off and squeezing the terminal a bit to make it a little tighter. I think as soon as I change the terminal it will be all good. Thanks for the quick reply, I feel kinda stupid, but the bolt was tight.
