Stumbling above half-throttle...
07-03-2012, 03:45 PM
#1
Stumbling above half-throttle... Hoping you guy's can help me out with this one...
Drove it to get lunch earlier, with no issues at all. Left parking lot and felt like I was in too high a gear (3rd instead of 1st). I checked and I was in 1st, put it in 2nd and same thing, bogging out. Felt like I was running out of gas, but I just filled up the other day. Roughly 70 miles on this tank (30 or so at the time of these first symptoms). I managed to baby it onto the highway and after getting it up to speed, no issues at all. We were trying to catch a movie but we had time to kill so we stopped at the mall.
I noticed on the way it handled fine unless I went above half throttle. At first I thought it was a certain RPM range, but if I needed to accelerate fast, I had to downshift and lightly touch the pedal to do so. Otherwise the car would bog and stumble.
Got to mall, and I used my scanner to check for codes. Same P0138 (IIRC) that I've had forever. Deleted it, no other codes.
Checked oil level and noticed I was low, so went to Walmart and threw in 3 quarts of their cheapo oil. (I'm almost due for an oil change and didn't want to waste the good/expensive stuff).
Started it up to check oil level and car had a noticeable miss. It'd be idling okay but every now and then it'd jump/stumble/miss. Leaving Walmart was much harder to do, because if I gave it too much gas it felt like it would die, if I wasn't careful with the clutch it felt like it'd stall. Stop and go traffic was a PITA, but after getting on the highway I had no problems at all as long as I kept it below half throttle.
Still no codes. It feels like when my coil-pack(s) went bad a couple years ago, but I don't remember if I was throwing a code then, but I'd assume I'd be getting a misfire code of some sort.
Drove it to get lunch earlier, with no issues at all. Left parking lot and felt like I was in too high a gear (3rd instead of 1st). I checked and I was in 1st, put it in 2nd and same thing, bogging out. Felt like I was running out of gas, but I just filled up the other day. Roughly 70 miles on this tank (30 or so at the time of these first symptoms). I managed to baby it onto the highway and after getting it up to speed, no issues at all. We were trying to catch a movie but we had time to kill so we stopped at the mall.
I noticed on the way it handled fine unless I went above half throttle. At first I thought it was a certain RPM range, but if I needed to accelerate fast, I had to downshift and lightly touch the pedal to do so. Otherwise the car would bog and stumble.
Got to mall, and I used my scanner to check for codes. Same P0138 (IIRC) that I've had forever. Deleted it, no other codes.
Checked oil level and noticed I was low, so went to Walmart and threw in 3 quarts of their cheapo oil. (I'm almost due for an oil change and didn't want to waste the good/expensive stuff).
Started it up to check oil level and car had a noticeable miss. It'd be idling okay but every now and then it'd jump/stumble/miss. Leaving Walmart was much harder to do, because if I gave it too much gas it felt like it would die, if I wasn't careful with the clutch it felt like it'd stall. Stop and go traffic was a PITA, but after getting on the highway I had no problems at all as long as I kept it below half throttle.
Still no codes. It feels like when my coil-pack(s) went bad a couple years ago, but I don't remember if I was throwing a code then, but I'd assume I'd be getting a misfire code of some sort.
07-03-2012, 03:51 PM
#2
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VERY similar to the problem that mane started having yesterday. Mine drives totally fine unless I give it more than 50 or so percent throttle and when it gets to about 3k rpms the problem occurs. Mine doesn't sound quite as bad as yours though.
07-03-2012, 03:54 PM
#3
Like I said, I thought it was RPM based, because in 5th anything above 2k RPMs seems to cause the bogging. However, I can drop it to 4th, and accelerate (slowly-half throttle) up to 3-4k RPMs with no trouble. It seems to just be related to how much pressure I put on the pedal.
07-03-2012, 04:55 PM
#5
That's what I was thinking too. Also thinking maybe ICM or fuel pump. But I'm really hoping not the pump. Plus I wasn't sure if the pump has a "dying" stage or if it fails, it's just done.
Suck not having a code to start somewhere though...
Suck not having a code to start somewhere though...
07-03-2012, 05:03 PM
#6
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I had this exact problem with my truck - hesitation at more than 1/2 or so throttle, but could go all the way to redline in each gear without issue as long as throttle was not open very much.
It turned out to be a bad coil pack, even though they all checked out fine resistance wise and I never got a code. Luckily the truck had all 6 in one unit so I didn't have to trial and error them like you will probably have to do. Good luck.
It turned out to be a bad coil pack, even though they all checked out fine resistance wise and I never got a code. Luckily the truck had all 6 in one unit so I didn't have to trial and error them like you will probably have to do. Good luck.
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07-03-2012, 08:29 PM
#8
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I had this exact problem with my truck - hesitation at more than 1/2 or so throttle, but could go all the way to redline in each gear without issue as long as throttle was not open very much.
It turned out to be a bad coil pack, even though they all checked out fine resistance wise and I never got a code. Luckily the truck had all 6 in one unit so I didn't have to trial and error them like you will probably have to do. Good luck.
It turned out to be a bad coil pack, even though they all checked out fine resistance wise and I never got a code. Luckily the truck had all 6 in one unit so I didn't have to trial and error them like you will probably have to do. Good luck.
07-03-2012, 09:39 PM
#11
Hmm. Yea my dad was telling me the same thing. He had a similar problem with his t/a. I just got a new fuel filter and some seafoam at autozone. So I'm gonna throw the new filter on tomorrow morning and then add seafoam once I'm at a half tank (I just filled up this morning) My dad had also told me that there is a way to test each individual coil so I will look into that before replacing them one by one at $45 a piece.
No more than usual. No cat and leaky exhaust means smelly exhaust. haha.
07-04-2012, 07:43 AM
#12
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If you have a logger (HP tuners or something) you could drive around and see if you are getting any misfires at all when driving. It won't throw a code until it goes over a certain limit but it still might be seeing them just not enough to throw a code. I couldn't do that when this happened to my truck because it is a Ford but it would have been a great help (I ended up changing a bunch of stuff I didn't need to - wires, plugs, MAF, fuel filter - because the coil pack resistances were all perfect).
Last edited by jrm1493; 07-04-2012 at 08:02 AM.
07-04-2012, 08:50 AM
#13
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Well I changed the fuel filter this morning with no luck. But hey ay least I have a new fuel filter on there now. Im going to give the coil swap one by one idea this weekend
