Thread: car running oddly...help?

Does your car have a catalytic converter ? The internal "brick" may have broken loose.

yea i do, i will also take that into consideration, im beggining to make a nice list of things to check lol

ALSO my car smells whenever i drive it for a bit like burnt oil (my oil leaks at the very bottom so i dont know what it could be getting on that it would give the burn smell like it does as its not on the exhaust as far as i can tell) does that narrow my list down at all..?

Sure you're not losing oil from somewhere else too? Like at the dizzy or around the VC? I would think the drive-ability issue and the oil smell issue are two different things, unless the oil smell is coming from the exhaust.

Sounds like a misfire check spark first

well i could definitly be leaking somewhere else and yea i didnt think they were a combined issue as i have been leaking oil since i bought the car and it the issue at hand hasnt been doing it for too long. just wanted to make sure the leaky oil couldnt have in anyway caused this problem. im going to go buy an inline spark tester from the parts house tommorow and i will begin my quest.

thanks guys for all your input this is definitly opening my eyes to some new possibilities and 'cough' wingman you were right earlier when you said all i have been doing is throwing parts at it

I wasn't going to say it We all do it from time to time, either because we've mentally checked out for a few days or are just too frustrated to slow down and think the problems over.

The inline tester shouldn't cost you too much, something like $4 or $5. If you havent already I'd suggest downloading the FSM for your car as it's very very helpful when you look at the fuel issue.

UPDATE: so i went to oreillys bought an inline spark tester. checked all 4 plugs, all did exactly the same thing. Lit up right away, rythmatic flashes on all, not speratic. the more gas i gave it the brighter and faster the lights flashed. which i believe is a good thing. (but also a bad thing because if it didnt do that it would have made this whole operation easier)

so on the packaging it has a little explanation of what the problem could be by what the light would do. It said it checks both fuel and ignition...soooooo does that mean we can rule out fuel and ignition problems? or shall i continue to check the pump..and ...what else fuel related?

is there ANYWAY this could be an o2 sensor? because i have no recollection of how old the o2 sensor is..

And i never noticed so i dont know if this is normal but my exhaust headers take all of about 1 minute before i can feel the heat coming off of them with my hand..

check the 02 with a dmm meter

ok do you know off the top of your head which setting my dmm needs to be on?

not sure how to check an 02 sensor but,

sounds like your car is running on three cylinders. so you say you're getting spark on all four cylinders? are you getting fuel? with the car running, pull the fuel injector clip off the injector one at a time, it should make the engine run worse/different. if you pull one off and it doesn't change anything you could have a bad fuel injector.

also, you could have one bad spark plug, have you looked at them?