The enigma of "Service Engine Soon" got transcribed via a hand held computer into "Knock Sensor" and "Misfire". This was obviously illustrative. After additional online research last night (I don't know how people fixed automotives before there was the "XTerra Owner's Club" Forums and the like), and a brief discussion with my new friend - we decided to buy new spark plug wires, distributor rotor and distributor cap.
We got home and attacked the Distributor first. Rotor looked alright, but it's cheap, so it got replaced without much thought. The Cap (shown) is just a plastic dome with six little metal pegs that go from the inside to the outside. On the outside, each peg connects to a spark plug wire, on the inside there's the rotor, with a metal connector on one end, it spins around and creates circuits with each little peg in turn, making the spark plugs fire. So the little pegs in our old one were all white and covered with corrosion!!! Not a happy Distributor Cap!!! So it got replaced, and we're hoping that was the problem... if it's all corroded and the connection fails to get made between the rotor and the peg, then that spark plug doesn't get the juice it needs to fire, hence - Misfire!!!
The Knock Sensor we're hoping was just picking up the accompanying shake in the engine from all the cylinders not firing in proper sequence. We'll see. My Josikins started fine after the exchange, but we're waiting till she cools down again to really be sure everything's back to Happiness. If not - then we'll install those new wires we got, and continue... if the wires don't help - we're probably looking at $700 worth of fuel injectors and goodness knows how much $ in labor.
But seeing as she's at 175,000 miles and has never so much as hiccuped - she's allowed to demand a little attention now and again (I just think D wishes she wouldn't have asked for it at the start of a three day weekend)!!!
2 comments:
The most common cause of a check engine light in my experience is the EGR valve sticking.
My old mustang would flash the codes to you via the check engine light when you made a certain electrical connection under the hood. Then you simply had to look up the code and follow the shop manual instructions. A bit of a pain, but made diagnosis easy, and treatment simply followed the steps. Saved my bacon more than once.
White smoke is sometimes ring sealing problems and can be ominous.
Don't buy champion plugs cuz they suck and many times don't work right out of the box.
Injectors are not a lot harder to replace than spark plugs, but require some special tools.
Consider running through some injector cleaner. I usually wait until until the gas tank is nearly empty, then put a full bottle (or two) in so the injector cleaner is at higher concentration.
Advice ends here.
I really enjoy reading the mechanical escapades. Reminds me of tearing into many a car in the past when I was too broke to drive anything decent, and way too broke to afford a mechanic. I enjoyed it anyway.
It never happens at a convenient time, however.
It's funny, I was reading about the EGR and thought about trying to check it this morning, before going to the parts place, but I was hoping the computer code system would give me more info than it did... looks like I'll head back into EGR valve research :)
Thanks!!!
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