Hey guys and gals,

My check engine light came on this morning. It could be a number of things. I'm going to go to Autozone after work and get the error codes. For now though, I'm just wondering if anyone has a clue as to what the problem may be. Here is a brief timeline of the car over the past weekend:

Friday - Drove to NH (about 150 miles) in the pouring rain
- Parked the car in a field overnight in the rain

Saturday - Drove 10 miles to another field
- Went through some puddles, nothing too deep ( < 1 foot deep )

Sunday - Drove home from NH (150 miles)

Now, I didn't experience any problems until this morning as I was driving to work. About 10 minutes into my commute, whenever I accelerated, it felt like the car was shaking a little bit, and was sluggish. I was low on gas (light was on for about 10 miles), so I figured it might be this.

So, I went to the gas station to fill up. At first, the gas pump would not pump. It was stuck inbetween the transfer from "selecting the octane" button push to the point where I can pump gas. After about a minute, the transfer occurred and I was able to pump the gas.

While filling my tank, I got to the point where I thought it would be full. All of a sudden, the gas pump clicked like it was done, but instead gas kept going into the tank, and it overfilled. I had gas dripping down the side of my car!!! I didn't know what to do so I just got a rag and wiped down the car and left.

Driving away from the gas station, acceleration felt a little better and the car didn't shake as much. Of course, about 10 miles later, the CEL began blinking, and then staying on, then blinking again, until finally it just stayed on solid. Once again, acceleration is sluggish and the car shakes when I get above 3k RPMs.

So does anyone have a clue? Thanks in advance.


Sorry for the long post. Cliff notes:

- Drove car fine over the weekend in the rain for over 300 miles
- Low on gas this morning, car was sluggish and shaking a little during acceleration
- Filled up gas, tank overfilled
- Drove 10 more miles, CEL blinked, stayed solid, blinked again, then finally stayed solid
- Acceleration is sluggish and car shakes over 3k RPMs

 

I have another question as well. If I have AutoZone read the codes, will they get erased?

 

Shaking could be misfiring.

Do you have a CAI ?

How hard did you hit the puddles ? Water could have possibly gotten somewhere it doesn't need to be.

 

No CAI and I did not hit the puddles hard at all. The car was also fine on the 150 mile drive back from NH on Sunday.

Could it be spark plugs? I have 52,000 miles on the car now and I don't believe they've been changed.

 

No codes will be erased. Take it and have the codes read immediately. You probably shouldn't drive the car with the CEL flashing.

 

A flashing CEL indicates an intermittant DTC. Such as random cylinder misfires. It could be a number of things. If you can still drive the car it has nothing to do with water or puddles. If you sucked up some water your engine would be toast as you can not combust water and you would have bent a rod already.

Spark plugs shouldn't need changed until 100k. Sounds like coil on one or more of the cylinders is bad.

 

Yep, you guys hit it right on the head. I am fucked, to say the least. KILL ME NOW!!!

P0302 - Cylinder 2 Misfire
P0303 - Cylinder 3 Misfire
P0304 - Cylinder 4 Misfire
P0305 - Cylinder 5 Misfire
P0306 - Cylinder 6 Misfire
P030* - Random Misfire

So my questions are:

1.) What in the hell caused this?
2.) What needs to be done?
3.) Is it covered under warranty?
4.) If not, how much is it gonna cost?

 

first a flashing CEL means something is happening that could damage the catalytic conveter, and a misfire can damage it thats why it was flashing. next its not a part that is specific to a single cylinder its something that affects the whole motor, vaccum leaks, low fuel pressure, bad fuel( like water in the tank). pop a vaccum guage on the enigne and tell me what you see. PCV valve stuck open, EGR vavle that is stuck open and the ecu does not see it. do you smell rotten eggs? i would take it in for diagnostics. if its covered it depends, if its part of the emission system it night be covered covered, what casued it; thats hard to tell without seeing the car, cost yet again who knows untill someone looks at it. i had that happen a couple of time to me, i would get those misfire codes, and the traction light would come on, it was somthing in the gas that it did not like, once i changed to shell it went away and it didn't happen anymore. usually happens in the winter more because the fuel is blened to fire really fast so it starts in the cold, but because of the higher compression and temps these motors are running, sometimes it will missfire and i give you the codes.

 

You need to take it to the dealership and have it looked at. I'd be willing to be a coil went bad. It isn't uncommon for our coil-on-plug system to fail.

 

It's getting towed to the dealer tomorrow. Thanks for the help guys.

 

dont have it towed...if you did a search you'd see i had this exact same problem...does it drive normal at cruise? just when you get on it it blinks the CEL then throws the hard code? MY CAT FOULED AND THESE WERE THE SYMPTOMS...if you wanna diagnose it your self you could just unbolt the cat and leave it mounted...if it drives normal then rest aasured it is the cat and should still be under warranty...exhaust system,or atleast the cat is 80K...
LMK

 

i re read your initial post and if the car cruises fine but only is dead when you punch it ...it sounds exactly like a fouled cat...when i looked at mine some of the first layers of ceramic where broken some peices big some small and some dust...i figure when i accelerated this moved everything to the back causing a worse clog

 

wait your telling me that 5 of the 6 coiles failed, so hows it driving? when a coil fails it stops producing sprak( usually even if it can produce a spark its shorted inside and the spark is so weak it can't fire the cylinder, now I have seen them fail under load like heavy acceleration but usually its one coil and then yes it will misfire but only on one cylinder). and even is 5 failed and only under load, the second he woudl load the motor up it would stall you can't have 5 coils misfiring and still have the car running.

 

I didn't notice it stored multiple codes... I just quickly glanced and saw the "random misfire" code.

 

yeah i though so, no problem. thats why i do this stuff for a living, you have to pay attention or you can chase yourself around for hours, its happened to me a couple of times. we will see tomorrow what he says they found.

 

i got money on the CAT

 

we will see, the thing with that a cat is that its damaged by somthing, usually with low miles they don't get damaged because of just nothing, if it is the cat you have to figure out what happened to keep it from happening again, was it running rich and burned up the cat, did somthing break in the motor and threw it in to the cat ( ring part, vavle part, casting flash, ect), did you hit something and smashed the cat that way, was it bad from the factory. something is up, usually a cats life time is at least 150,000 mile with everything running good.

 

Hey typeR, I read your thread on the cat. So I'm thinking that may be it as well. At least that's what I'm hoping. I really don't know what could have caused it, as like I said before I drove 300 miles over the weekend with no problems, but then 10 minutes into my morning commute on Monday the problems started.

Do I unbolt the cat from the engine or from the exhaust pipe? I'm assuming the engine, but I'd like to be sure. What tools would I need, just a socket wrench?

Another strange thing is the gas overflow, but I think this is due to the DTCs being triggered. Am I correct here?

 

could a cat be damaged if it were nice and hot and then all of a sudden got dunked in water?

 

unblot the cat from the engine side...i dont know for sure what youre saying about the gas over flow,but i dont think it has anything to do with your car or what happening?

 

If it is the CAT, it should still be under warranty. I just had mine changed at 56K, because the insides all came apart. I didn't get any CEL's though. I would take it to the dealer and have them look at it rather than try to take it apart your self.

 

i don't think so, i have never heard of that happening, and i don't see how it could happen, the most you coudl do is crakc a flang, becasue of the rapid cool down, the the inside of a cat is special ceramics, that can move and change shape.

 

just looking for a reason...but you now have two people in this thread that have had there cats replaced because the insides were broken

 

who knows why it happens but it happens. maybe it was a defective one from the factory.

 

My check engine light came on this morning...took it to AutoZone and it spit out a P0 104...or somthing like that...not sure if thats right, but he unit said "EGR flow insufficient" Called the dealership and it will be replaced under warrenty on Friday....

 

that would be p0401 if i remember right, and yeah the egr valve is carboned up, if it was me i would have tried to clean it up first but seeing as your getting it done under warrenty they who cares, but when you have to pay 250 out of your own pocket then you try to clean it first.

 

Is the warranty on emissions (egr? catalitic converter?) longer per federal law than the factory warranty of 4/50?

 

not sure how long the warranty is supposed to last, i have the 100k/7yr warranty which has covered every thing that I have needed it to. In your warrenty manual there is a section on different emmission parts that have longer warrenty per federal regulations so i think you have to go part/system by part/system.

 

look in your owers manual, it can be up to 8 years 80,000 miles for some parts

 

UPDATE

Dealer located the problem. Bad coil in Cylinder 5. Somehow this was causing the other codes to be thrown as well. Is that possible?

 

Yes it is possible. The ECU can throw unrelated DTC's for odd reasons. I had three odd DTC's stored when my O2 sensor failed. One for the O2 sensor and two for something to do with the VSA system. I tried clearing all 3 codes but they kept coming back. Once the O2 sensor was replaced, cleared all 3 codes and both of the VSA codes that came up at the same time also went away.

I told you it was a coil

I'm 2 for 2 in this thread.

 

mrsteve, you win

 

CEL is part of the game brotha