Figure out what’s wrong with my car. Taking it to a shop is probably too expensive and figuring it out myself is too daunting of a task. It sometimes dies when I’m slowing to a stop, and I have to put it in park and restart it. Sometimes it’s hard to start and then the tachometer stays at zero even though the engine is running.
I had something intermittent like this, and it turned out that I had a cracked distributor cap. It turned out to be a stupidly easy repair, and not a very expensive part.
Edit: this was a car as ancient as I am. I’m not sure modern cars even have that part, anymore.
Had the same exact problem with my car. When I slowed down the car taking a turn or at a stop light it would lose power and shut off.
Chances are very good the throttle body just needs to be cleaned. This as I discovered is one of the most common causes of this problem.
Basically it’s the valve that opens and closes to feed air into the engine. When you press the accelerator the throttle body opens up and when you take your foot off of it it starts to close. After awhile, gunk blocks the edges of the opening so the engine doesn’t get enough air to make the little explosions that move the pistons.
Take off a few covers and detach a few hoses to get to the throttle body, spray throttle body cleaner and scrub the edges of the throttle body clean and the car was good as new.
You can do this yourself for the cost of a can of throttle body cleaner and some basic tools like old toothbrushes/rags, channel lock pliers, socket wrenches and screwdrivers. Even if you don’t have the tools you can borrow some for free at your local O’Reilly, AutoZone, or whatever car parts shop you got in your area. Just tell them what you need, leave your credit card with them and they’ll return it to you when you’re done with the tools.
Search YouTube for “clean throttle body <insert year model make of your car>” and you will find a ton of videos showing you step by step how to do it.
I’m a guy that doesn’t even know how to change my own oil and I was able to do it in about an hour my first time after getting the supplies and watching the video along the way.
Don’t be intimidated this stuff is waaaaay easier to do than you might think and it’ll save you a huge wad of dough and give you peace of mind :o
Figure out what’s wrong with my car. Taking it to a shop is probably too expensive and figuring it out myself is too daunting of a task. It sometimes dies when I’m slowing to a stop, and I have to put it in park and restart it. Sometimes it’s hard to start and then the tachometer stays at zero even though the engine is running.
I had something intermittent like this, and it turned out that I had a cracked distributor cap. It turned out to be a stupidly easy repair, and not a very expensive part.
Edit: this was a car as ancient as I am. I’m not sure modern cars even have that part, anymore.
Had the same exact problem with my car. When I slowed down the car taking a turn or at a stop light it would lose power and shut off.
Chances are very good the throttle body just needs to be cleaned. This as I discovered is one of the most common causes of this problem.
Basically it’s the valve that opens and closes to feed air into the engine. When you press the accelerator the throttle body opens up and when you take your foot off of it it starts to close. After awhile, gunk blocks the edges of the opening so the engine doesn’t get enough air to make the little explosions that move the pistons.
Take off a few covers and detach a few hoses to get to the throttle body, spray throttle body cleaner and scrub the edges of the throttle body clean and the car was good as new.
You can do this yourself for the cost of a can of throttle body cleaner and some basic tools like old toothbrushes/rags, channel lock pliers, socket wrenches and screwdrivers. Even if you don’t have the tools you can borrow some for free at your local O’Reilly, AutoZone, or whatever car parts shop you got in your area. Just tell them what you need, leave your credit card with them and they’ll return it to you when you’re done with the tools.
Search YouTube for “clean throttle body <insert year model make of your car>” and you will find a ton of videos showing you step by step how to do it.
Just an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDnb8luAkQw
I’m a guy that doesn’t even know how to change my own oil and I was able to do it in about an hour my first time after getting the supplies and watching the video along the way.
Don’t be intimidated this stuff is waaaaay easier to do than you might think and it’ll save you a huge wad of dough and give you peace of mind :o
I’d add some fuel injector cleaner. The fuel injectors might be gummed up and when it gets to low rpm it starves the engine of fuel.
Surely there’s a mechanics advice community here somewhere? They could at least get you started on troubleshooting.