wierd engine problem

colonel6632 · 02-13-2011, 08:45 PM

hey guys. my 2.2 ecotec had a weird problem starting on saturday.

while driving the car will all of a sudden start stuttering and lose power while under load and driving. but it only does it once and a while and for short times.

there doesn't seem to be a pattern. for example. went to a friends house a town over, and had the cruise set. every couple minutes it would bog down and slow down. hit the clutch, give it some gas and away it went.

it's kinda like when your traction control kicks in. sounds exactly like that.

on the way back. worked fine the whole time.

not sure if it does it under load or not. i think it might of a couple times at a stop light.

so i've narrowed it down to a couple things.

1. fuel pump starting to go bad?
2. plugged injector?
3. my negative post on the battery might not be making a proper connection. i recently took off the post and things were slightly corroded, but i reinstalled anyways.
4. bad 02 sensor

things that have changed recently. on wednesday i installed a new front 02 sensor, and disconnected the negative post on the battery to clear the computer, and attempt to get rid of the cel.

filled car up saturday afternoon. it was right empty (been this way for about 2 weeks now)

i dont think it's bad gas since it had trouble starting saturday morning. fired up and died right away.

i'm going to take battery posts off and clean them up first, see if that fixes it.

any other ideas?

sorry for the long post. trying to give alot of information

colonel6632 · 02-15-2011, 08:43 AM

just in case anyone was wondering.

it appears my problem was not any of those. i had water in my gas tank i believe.

Philbar71 · 02-15-2011, 02:27 PM

Could also be bad coils, wires, plugs, or ICM.

colonel6632 · 02-15-2011, 08:20 PM

all of those are less than 2 year old. and i dont have wires, so i knew it wasn't those.

put some gas line antifreeze, running much better now

Philbar71 · 02-15-2011, 08:37 PM

I meant boots. lol. And I had a brand new stock coil pack from advance die in less than a week. lol.

colonel6632 · 02-15-2011, 08:41 PM

ya. i hate it when that happens. thanks for the advice though! any help is appreciated

alero_bmxer · 02-15-2011, 10:07 PM

we had a truck come into work last week for a similar problem. cylinders 7 and i believe 5 were having misfires and throwing codes. dropped the tank and sure enough 3/4 of a full tank of gas was water. contacted the gas station and they said the pump was out of order but they didn't have a sign on the pump at the time of the guy putting gas in his truck.

colonel6632 · 02-15-2011, 10:35 PM

ya. i'm burning this tank asap, cleaning injectors, and putting good gas in next time

Chris2000 · 02-15-2011, 10:40 PM

Might be a good idea to seafoam the car, on the can it tells you all the benefits of it and one of them is "removes moisture from fuel and oil". Plus, nothing wrong with having nice clean internals

colonel6632 · 02-15-2011, 11:30 PM

lol, did that this afternoon!