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Engine Light on, sputters when accelerating.

11K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  Significant_Other 
#1 ·
Today is a very wet day. The engine was good in the am, but started acting up later on in the day.

Last time I went out to start it, it took a few hits of the gas to keep it going. Now it idles fine, but wont accelerate and sputters the whole way through. The engine light is on now too(I checked all the fluids and they are all good).

We thought maybe moisture in the fuel due to the heavy rain/snow/hail today and the fuel was low so we gased it up and added a bottle of gas line anit-freeze just in case. I suppose this could take many many hours to get to all the water in the tank if there is any.

The air filter is clean and dry. I changed the fuel filter, spark plugs (added dielectric tune up grease to the plugs) a few months ago.

Thoughts are now that maybe the timing belt slipped a notch.

Any thoughts or ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Kevin
 
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#3 ·
I checked and all the wires are good, clean and dry.

It happened again this morning. It starts fine and is good for a minute or so. After that the hesitations resume.

Is it possible that the engine indicator light means that there is a faulty sensor or chip? I guess the only way to tell is to hook it up to a computer.
 
#5 ·
Plug Wires it was!

Turns out Auto Value has a code reader and will check out your car for free. The reader said exactly that; Cylinder 4 miss fire.

Picked up some wires for $37 and voila! Problem solved.

Computer in the car is smarter that I thought. I didnt think that the computer would know that there was a mis-fire.

Now the indicator light is out.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Kevin
 
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