I have a 2000 TL with 95,000 Miles on it.
Transmission was replaced at 75,000 by Acura, Spark Plugs have been changed to the new NGK Iridium plugs 6 months ago. I had the EGR valve replaced along with a Motovac as well ( thank you for the assistance on that one )

I just had a oil change last week and today the Check Engine Light (CEL) comes on the car seems to shake like it is going to run out of gas and stall. When I start the car, it is fine. I know that when I had the oil change, the air filter was removed and replaced.

I plan to take the car into the shop tomorrow, but I just wanted to ask everyone for their opinions and wisdom on this situation.

Thank you all for you help in advance,

Cheers

 

check EGR port... you'd probably have to clean those suckers out.

blue dot



and if you have a 99...

underside of the intake manifold.

 

Get your codes read. We can help you better that way in stead of guessing. Most auto parts stores do it for free.

 

Thank you so much jjashaa. Will I be able to see if the EGR port is gummed up? One more question, when the EGR valve was replaced was this port cleaned up? I even noticed a sort of a "rotten egg" smell coming from the exhaust.

Thank you again jjashaa for your help !!!

 

Way too many possibilities without knowing..

 

Yes, I had a friend with a OBDII read it and it comes up with a lean code. I was told by him that this could mean a million things...YIKES!!!

 

^ well, i just guessed from your decription.....

when they replace, i doubt they clean it too..

clean it.... and then while you're at auto store to pick up the liquid stuff, ask them to read your code

 

if ur smelling that kind of exhaust and going lean, ur prob misfiring. but get the code read.

 

Cool...thanks everyone. I will report back when I return from the shop tomorrow. Stay tuned !!!

 

Actually the last time that I brought my car in. They couldn't figure out what was causing the CEL. Then I told them about the EGR valve and the motovac and it has been fine for 1.5 yrs now. So thank you all for your help on that one.

Cheers

 

Really? If YOU had to tell them what to look for I'd start looking around for another shop.

 

Hi Wysdom :

I'd be thinking about the fuel that in your tank. Rotten egg smell usually means excessive sulfur which may be from a bad tank of gas.

smartypants.

 

Thanks "Smartypants"..no pun intended. I was actually think about that because my buddy with his 2007 Subaru Impreza STI experienced this same situation with some bad gas and it knocked out his O2 sensor. But it never caused his car to misfire though. Can a bad O2 sensor cause a misfire on the TL???

 

Correct you are Gfaze, I have now taken it to another shop. It is closer to my house too.

 

I would suspect a coil- often they are mishandled at plug change and some months later one dies- running on 5 cyl will throw a code and make for bad idle
It may be partially working too
If the codes say multiple cyl misfire you likely have 1 bad coil
Rotten eggs can be cat failure-plugging
Been racing the car?
What did it do or did you have done righjt before this started

Never heard of replacing the egr valve when the ports are the issue
While you can do an ok job of egr port cleaning thru the top- its easy to pull the entire manifold and clean the intake runners and all inside the manifold,,,makes it like new

 

Thank you 01tl4tl for your insight. As a matter of fact, I had just driven the TL down from Toronto to Montreal and then to Boston and back on the Easter long weekend. Otherwise, that is it. I don't do any more racing at my age...LOL!!! What is weird is that I had just taken the car to Jiffy Lube for an oil change 2 days before this happened. I had to yell at the guys to stop dismantling my air filter and my coolant etc. and to just change the oil on the car. I hope that they didn't do any damage to the car because I gave them some attitude...YIKES!!!

 

Then I would inspect the air filter cover bolts and the hose clamps to that area and rubber snout to the intake from the airbox cover-
if they got the edge of the filter seal stuck or it sucked inward- or a cover edge broken, or just forgot to tighten the bolts (seen it more than once).....
Go back and recheck their work
Could have easily left something loose when you stopped them, and causing vac leak or other probs now

What I meant by racing was some owners have found that a few 100mph sustained runs will overheat the cat and cause the egg smell
So will a cat thats just wornout- the stuff in gasoline is bad for the cats- go figure

Have a muffler shop inspect it,, in case

 

Wow...thank you so much for your help 01tl4tl !!! The car is still in the shop, they didn't have time to check it out yesterday. But I will ask them to check the areas that you have recommended.

I am amazed that the areas regarding the air filter can cause a misfire...that is alarming !!!

Cheers and thanks again

 

The mystery is solved. It is a bad coil and the TL will need an oil change, motovac, spark plug change, and the throttle body needs to be cleaned out. Luckily, there was no damage to the CAT because I got the car into the shop in time.