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Coupes & Convertibles Pontiac Sunfire Pontiac Sunfire Starting and Stalling Problems
231 messages, Last post on Nov 23, 2009 at 10:36 AM
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Replying to: mkehayias (May 26, 2009 2:27 am)
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Replying to: slackerman (May 26, 2009 6:23 pm) |
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Replying to: mkehayias (May 26, 2009 2:27 am) P0141 O2 Sensor Heater Circuit Malfunction P0300 Multiple random misfire P0141 O2 Sensor Heater Circuit Malfunction I cleared the codes, cycled the ignition key, no new codes, cranked the engine, no new codes. The O2 Sensor is shiney new. I also noticed that the Theft Protection light never goes out, is it supposed to and when? I don't feel like the codes are helping. Any ideas are appreciated.
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Replying to: mkehayias (May 27, 2009 5:36 pm) |
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| No worries, was going to replace it anyway... | |
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Replying to: karleighskar (Mar 07, 2009 6:56 pm) |
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after all the minor problems of the car were fixed we could only get it to stall in drive. it never would stall in reverse. unplugging the tcc solenoid didn't solve the problem. we changed the tcc solenoid and the car runs great. no more stalling,no more shuddering, no more shaking 
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It took almost three months and almost $1,000 to figure it out, but thank God my husband and Dad did the work for me, if I had to take this to a professional shop there's no telling what it would have cost us... The problem: The car started fine, and would run, but around 2100 - 2500 rpm's it would start to miss- I would say it was like the car was trying to clear its throat. It wouldn't throw a check engine light for over a month, but it finally did- just a generic misfire code. No duh! What we tried: New fuel filter, new spark plugs (gapped correctly), New Boots for the plugs- the 2.4 does not have wires, new coil packs, new tower/coil housing- up to this point nothing helped! Alright, what else can we do? Several new sensors (I honestly can't remember them all!) New Ignition Control Module. At this point I was so fed up with throwing money away I decided no more, I would just park the thing and drive my husbands truck. So that's what I did for two weeks, on a whim I decided to drive to my Mom's house, a mile away, to my surprise there was no miss, no throat clearing, it ran perfect! Could my prayers have been answered?!? Well, for a week they were, the car just ran perfectly! Slowly but surely though, it started messing up again, and it progressively got worse... Well, after talking it over with mechanic buddies and motor-head family members we decided that it sounded like I had a fuel pump problem, we needed to bite the bullet and put a new pump on it. ... ... ... After a couple nasty hours my husband came home, grease up to his elbows, tossed the keys on the table and said he was dumbfounded, had no clue what was wrong with the car. The fuel pump didn't fix a thing! Ahhh son of a gun! So much money spent, problem still not solved. I had one more mobile mechanic friend take a look at it, he did a compression check and everything was perfect, but this just wasn't making any sense. He did find that one of my spark plugs on cylinder 4 was white- could I have had a bad spark plug from when we had replaced it? We had got the AC Delco plugs, the real deal that everyone told us that we just had to get, but stranger things have happened. He replaced the plug and it ran great... for a couple hours... the funny thing was we figured out that it did run really great for those two hours, and again it had sit there for three days. So could there be something to it just sitting there and resetting something for it to run better like it did... It all started to come together, could the ECM - the engine control module aka "the computer" be bad in this car? I've always heard computers are super expensive, and I didn't even want to think about how much that was going to cost. Well, we took a chance and went to the pull-a-part, found a computer off of a 2000 Chevy Cavalier, a 2.2L and honestly we didn't know if the 2.2 would work with a 2.4, but for $30 I took a chance. The deal on the ECM - GM used the computers on several models, 2.2 and 2.4 Sunfires, Cavaliers, and more, so the numbers matched and it would work, but the deal is it has to be reflashed for the specific car, using your vin#. Trying to find someone to flash it was the hard part, but luckily we found that O' Reilly autoparts would do it for $75. It took them all of ten minutes to do it. At first when we installed it the car wouldn't even start, so we thought we had a bad computer, that maybe it wouldn't work with my car after all, but luckily we found that you have to reset the anti-theft passcode by doing a long series of key turns to program the new password for the new computer. We did the song and dance and TAH FREAKIN DAH the car has worked perfectly since. It's running better now than it has in years! Now, one might question, how does a computer just go bad? Well, I don't have a 100% answer for this, but some info that might just be a coincidence, but who knows... Before this all happened, we installed an after market radio, and for those of you who don't know this, the GM models that are 2000 and newer have somewhat of a brain inside the factory radio- it controls that anti-theft system, your door ajar chime and more. The typical wiring harness for "normal" pre-2000 aftermarket GM is only about $10 at your local wal-mart, but for this 2000-post harness, that also has a box attached to it that is supposed to take care of what the factory radio controls, it's almost $100! Best Buy wouldn't even sell it to me for fear of me suing them if something "went wrong." That might have should have been a red flag right there, but I wanted that aftermarket radio. We got the harness on our own, installed the radio, and it worked fine for a good while, but it started messing up, making a clicking noise when I would switch it from any other setting (tuner, auxilary, etc.) to CD. I even remember shutting the door and the door ajar chime still chiming away for a few minutes there after... For installing the new ECM you have to reference to that red light on the factory radio for resetting that anti-theft pass code. I mean I'm telling y'all this, I think that after market radio - mainly that wiring harness, is the culprit. Maybe I'm nuts, but I never had any trouble out of that car until after it was installed. I will say this, I have the old factory radio in there now, and there she will be, the CD player doesn't work but oh well. I'm not taking a chance, even though I sure do miss that HD radio feature, and MP3 CD's are the best for roadtrips! Who am I kidding a car that runs is the best for roadtrips!!! If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask- I know how frustrating this can be, and if I can help one person that would just be wonderful! Good luck to everyone!!! |
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Replying to: 19amy82 (Jun 14, 2009 7:48 pm)
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Replying to: peachstateboi (Jun 21, 2009 1:15 pm)
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