Thread: car running oddly...help?

ok everyone so im hoping i can give you the symptoms of my car to the best of my knowledge and maybe one or more of you have had the same problem or heard of it yes?

ok so i have an nx2000, so when i start the car it turns over for a few seconds then starts...BUT the exhaust sounds like a harley (which isnt what it normally sounds like) you know like a chug chug chug chug but you know fast...hope that explained it good enough :o and there is an OBVIOUS lack of 'get up and go'

it idles very speratically, sometimes it idles at 1 sometimes 1250 sometimes 750sometimes 1750.

Now the weirdest thing about the exhaust noise is that it is very random. most the time it makes the weird sound but yesterday as i was driving and i sounded like a harley driving down the road my car kinda stuttered for a second and VWALLA it sounded perfectly normal and i felt the my car regain its powers BUT when i stopped at a light it sounded like my car was revving itself. then next time i started it...back to harley mode.

NOW i know i have an oil leak coming right from between engine and tranny..and i think my oil pump MAY be leaking but im not sure..i ckecked spark plugs they look good and i regapped them..new plug wires..new fuel filter..MAYBE 5000 miles on fuel pump. new water pump. oh and...there is a ticking noise coming from the engine bay...i dont wanna say knock but it might be a tiny one

so sorry about the long post im just at a stand still because i am definitly not a mechanical genius and from what ive seen since ive been on here...alot of you are or should be lol

thanks guys and gals

sorry this is not meant to be a bump...also i just noticed that 5th gear and 4th gear have like no power whatsoever...well they are just barely chugging along (feels like if you were to jump from 1st to 5th with out hitting the other gears...THAT bogging feeling) thanks guys id really appreciate some help..

check ignition, then check fuel. You need to confirm that all cylinders are getting proper spark. Test it all out, don't just throw parts at it (not that what you've done so far is wrong). Best way to do this is Ignitionmate or a inline spark tester. You might need another person to watch as you crank the car.

If ignition checks out on all 4, head to fuel and check your fuel pressure, fuel lines, and injectors. Make sure the pump is working, that there aren't any leaks or crimps in the feed or return lines, and that the injectors all open when supplied proper voltage (and also, that none of them are leaking either).

Basically you're not running on one or more cylinders, and only 3 things you need is air, fuel, ign. If you had a 'get up and go' moment, that leads me to think that the compression and valve side of everything wants to work, but fuel or ign is stopping the process.

Check everything above per the FSM and let us know what you find.

hey thanks alot for your help, i will check all that out asap and get back with my results!

if ignition is fix and problem still persist you should also look into the maf sensor. a bad maf sensor makes your idle go lopey, just a suggestion. anyone here correct me if im wrong, but a bad maf sensor also makes ur car feel slower on top end

also check your tps

yeah, but it won't cause a 'chugging' like he's describing, it will just cause a straight power loss. Besides, always gotta start with the basics then move on.

Good point though, so begs the question, does your idle bounce alot, is it rhythmic at all? If you apply just a tiny bit of gas in neutral, does it even out? How high can you rev the engine? 'Sounding like a Harley' seemed obvious to me, but working on bikes I'm sure my perception of that is different from other people's, so might not have conveyed your issue properly :P

well when i start the car it does the usual goes up to maybe 2 or so..then comes back down and "where it will stop nobody knows" i can redline it at idle, and it doesnt jump around while i give it some gas, once it finds a spot at idle where it wants to be it usually stays there until the next stop. sorry this is kind of a hard issue to describe.

and yes about the harley noise..it sounds like instead of my engine giving a constant exhaust it is like very quickly shooting balls of exhaust. so like the duh duh duh duh duh

When my MAF ground was bad, cold idle sounded like I had racing cams in. However, I had the opposite issue in that throughout the rev range it seemed like I had more power as I was running super rich. The MAF (either dirty, faulty, or poorly grounded) could be the cause, but I would look into what Wingman suggested first.

Yea ill start from the top and check what all of you have mentioned thanks for the help guys..now can I check the spark by just pulling the plug wires while the car is running or should I just check into one of the devices to check it

I would get a device to test it, like the inline spark tester. If you are running on 3 cyl, that 4th cyl could be bad for a number of reasons. Not that I'm an expert, but I imagine that if you pulled the plug wire from the bad cyl, no change would occur in the idle of the engine. So you might have found your cyl, but the plug might have been working just fine but the injector was bad.