Hi my name is Matt and I am not sure if I am posting in the right forum board or not. I have a 2004 Dodge SX 2.0 and it may not have been the best descision for me to buy at the time. I have plenty of trouble since I bought it but that may be a punishment for buying used. Either way the problem I am recently having is possibly 2 problems they are as follows. The check engine light will come on and it comes on at random times, speeds, turning not turning, differrent times of the day, different amounts of gas left it all seems very random. The next problem is unless I accellerate very very slowly it, to me anyway, will feel as if it is stalling when attempting to change gears or possibly having trouble going into gears. I have always had the entire car shake when changing gears both while driving and changing from park to drive. Each change shakes the car in a way I have not felt in any other car. I have noticed a lack of power and feul economy in the car. My girlfriend has a 2002 (or an 04 not quite sure at the time I am posting this) 2.4L pontiac grandAM or prix and she has better acceleration, much more power and responsivness. She also has a better feul economy. A friend of mine has a 2001 toyota Rav4 with all wheel drive and gets the same feul economy as me but gets better performence and power than I do.


If there is anything anyone can do to help me out I would greatly appreciate it. I am currently without a job and have no extra money to spend and would need my car to work properly in the event I do find a job.


Thank-you
Matt.

 

Some starters: What is the condition of the spark plugs and air filter? Enough fluid in the transmission? Have you pulled the code when the light is on? Very easy to do. Turn the car off. Turn the key to the on position, then off, then on, then off, then back on and leave it there. Any codes will come up in the odometer display after "done" is displayed.

 

im having the same problem with fuel economy get about 200km to the tank. also i have a small shutter when it changes between 2nd and 3rd gear.

 

I took your advice and did the code check on the car and it came up as P-0344 which is "CRANKSHAFT POSITION SENSOR INTERMITTENT" not quite sure what this means. As far as I can tell my spark plugs are less than 15k and a year and a half old and are platinum plugs. Not sure when the air filter has been changed last close to a year I think. fluids look good. After talking to the local chrysler dealer ship they would have to hook it up to thier computer to tell me what is wrong with it costing me about 100 just to tell me what it wrong when I could already know. Not quite sure if it is worth it. Just out of curiosity is it wrong for this car to feel extremely gutless. I put the hammer down and it takes forever to accelerate. I always seem to get beat at lights and it seems to take forever to pass someone on teh highway which really is annoying. What type of power should I expect from a 2.0 4cyl engine?

 

that doesnt sound normal. cause my car has all the ***** i beat everyone off lights and blow past them on the highway. so im not sure in your case.

 

The crankshaft position sensor will cause a lot of grief when it is not working correctly. Most of the time, simply replacing the sensor fixes the problem. Sometimes replacing the wiring is necessary. It will cause very poor performance and economy across the board (I.E. - this problem needs to be fixed A.S.A.P. IMO). If your plugs are some platinum ones, I personally would change them to the factory plug. A set of four should run no more than $10. The part number is on the bottom of the hood on the sticker. These cars are picky about spark plugs. That will probably help too.

Also, stick with a Dodge sensor. The cars don't usually like the aftermarket cheapies.

 

so its better to stick to factory plugs other than performance plugs? cause i am about to change mine and would like to get the best plug i can.

 

I wrote the wrong code down earlier when I made my last post. Instead of it beign the crankshaft it was CAMSHAFT POSITION SENSOR INTERMITTENT although after reading many other posts online it seems as though both seem to become a problem down the road.


Thanks-you for anwsering my post in as much detail as you did. I definetly saved myself about 100 bucks by not needing to take it to the shop to have someone else look at it. I am still unsure what exactly the problem was and will be asking my gf's if he could look at it for me and possibly do the work. I will keep checking here to see if any new information comes up and will post the results if I am lucky enough to have my car looked at.

 

Alright. Simply change the type of sensor from Crankshaft to Camshaft. Makes sense though. Just thinking about it, I believe the car won't even start if the crank sensor is bad. The Camshaft sensor isn't too bad to replace. Just one bolt, undo the plug, replace, and reverse removal really.

ksiiqtaboo - Unless you have some pretty decent work done to the engine that warrants a performance plug, there is no need to run them; or waste the money on them.

 

Another thing I can add to it is that is had trouble starting a few times. Not really cold anytime it happened and 1 of the times when it took the longest it was just driven a few hours before. it sounded like it wanted to start and tried several times and then I turned it off. Then I gave it a few seconds and immediatly started it up agian and it went without any trouble or hesitation. Kinda made me think about darthroush said earlier about the crankshaft switch.