I'm beginning to think my car is haunted. Neither me, my husband, nor his step-father, a mechanic of 30-odd years, can figure this out & we have a lot of car knowledge between us. My 99 sohc has been randomly sputtering & dying at stoplights unless I continually give it gas for a few weeks now. It idles for a few seconds, starts running really rough, the RPMs start dropping, and I have to continually rev it or it dies. No engine light. As soon as I accelerate it drives just fine. No missing that i can detect. It does it REALLY erratically & we cannot recreate the problem, and if I drive it really hard like a sports car for a few minutes, it temporarily fixes it. Almost like something is stuck & driving it crazily unsticks it...?

Yesterday my timing belt tensioner basically shattered while i was driving. We towed it home & replaced the timing belt, the tensioner, the harmonic balancer(which was bent up), the alternator belt, and I swapped out my gauge cluster with one w/a tach. It started right up & purred like a cougar for about 30 miles, then sputtered & tried to die again at a stoplight. It did this twice within 5 minutes & then ran fine. Again, we cannot recreate the problem. I should mention that last October or November it was acting similarly & I replaced the egr valve & it ran fine up until a few weeks ago. Then this past February i really needed money & ended up returning said egr valve & putting the old one back on. But it ran fine until a few weeks ago :/ I also think it may be the fuel pump because its acting like its not getting enough gas, plus lately I've been noticing that I need to give it more & more gas to get up hills, and my gas mileage is going to crap. It fluctuates like crazy- 40+ mpg some days, in the 20s other days. Also everytime it sputters I smell kind of a gassy/exhausty smell. It also occasionally starts hard.

Our ideas-

EGR, obviously
map sensor
clogged pcv valve
fuel pump
throttle position sensor
Coil pack
SOMETHING electrical
and I hate to even type this- my valves

All ideas welcome! I should also mention that it's eating oil. Only about a quart a month or so, and we found oil on the map sensor. There is no smoke coming out the back end nor any funny smells, and we can't figure out where the oil is going. Thanks in advance, sorry for such a long post.

 

PCV valve dumping oil into the intake wouldnt be unheard of...
ERG stuck open dumping into the intake would be unheard of either...
Both are cheap.

First thing though, test the fuel pressure and see if it's at 49psi. If it wont get 49psi when running replace the fuel pump with a walbro 255lph from modern (half cost of retail for new OEM pump) If it will not hold 49psi, your regulator is bad. If your regulator is bad, replace the fuel pump with an OEM one. It includes a new pump, and a regulator...


30 years as a mechanic... Should know where to start...

*EDIT*Didnt see that the t-belt broke... THis is an interfearnce engine... do a leak down test immediatly*EDIT*

~Nate

 

Well, the belt didn't break, the tensioner crapped out & the belt only skipped a couple teeth.

Thanks though, I'll see about that leak down test.

 

Not sure how many teeth need to skip before your valves try to disprove the Paulie Exclusion principle...

~Nate

 

Great. That's my worst fear at the moment.

 

Leakdown test will tell you though, and should be more then an hours labor...

~Nate

 

once u get the results of the leak down things will get much easier. sounds like it mite be a prob with the fpr (fuel pressure regulator). as far as the oil prob, EGR/new pcv. make sure u check the hose leading from the intake to the pcv valve and make sure it's not dryrotted through. mine was. u can pull a good one from the j/y and tread the rubber so it wont crack as easily.

 

I having the same problem with my 99 Neon DOHC. I'm subbing to this thread to keep track. If I figure it out first, I'll let you know.

Have you checked for codes?

 

she said there is no codes...had the same thing happen to me but then it magically stopped i didnt do anything so i wish i could help you out

 

She said no engine light. There may be codes stored. IDK, talking out my ***.