car problems in the morning

the_music_man

aka prodj88 =P
Joined
2 Jul 2002
Messages
2,401
its starting to get cold now and my cars doing some ghetto stuff like turning off randomly when im driving heheh...when i warm it up for 10 minutes it usually doesn't stop but i find it ridiculous to wait that long for my car to warm up and it hasn't dropped below 50F. imagine the problems im gonna have in winter when its like 20!!! anyway the point of this thread is do you guys have the same problem? and is there some inexpensive way to tune ur car so it doesn't do that? i have a 93 nissan sentra btw
 
Injected?

Carb?


Sounds like not enough fuel in teh mixture. Ever ran some cleaner through the system?
Or had your fuel pressure checked? Ever had teh fuel filter replaced?



Seems to be injected. Here is some interesting info http://www.alldata.com/TSB/41/92410917.html
 
Not the battery, or it wouldn't start...

Back when I lived north (my parents retired in Maine), putting a gas line anti-freeze in there is something many people did to prevent problems. It also helped absorb any moisture that might get in the fuel tank. Not sure if this might or might not be your problem however... I do seem to remember something about maitanance people had done on their cars while heading into winter (to winterize it or something), though it's been over 7 years since I moved to the desert southwest.
 
I would guess it's something to do w/ the moisture (heavy dew) this time of year. I'm not mechanic though so thats all the help I can be. :( Oh and 20F is nothing .. gets -20F (with windchill) sometimes in the winter .. just try and start your car then. :)
 
Son Goku said:
Not the battery, or it wouldn't start...

Back when I lived north (my parents retired in Maine), putting a gas line anti-freeze in there is something many people did to prevent problems. It also helped absorb any moisture that might get in the fuel tank. Not sure if this might or might not be your problem however... I do seem to remember something about maitanance people had done on their cars while heading into winter (to winterize it or something), though it's been over 7 years since I moved to the desert southwest.
Gas line anti-freeze is just alcohol, teh alcohol will absorb teh water and still burn, and teh freezing point is still way lower than it gets anywhere south of teh north pole.

But at 50 degrees it isn' the problem. Proper fuel to air mixture is. Extreme cold can cause even a fuel injected car not to start easily.




Alcohol such as ethanol (from grains) is a poor detergent. Methanol (from wood, or NG) is a much better detergent to clean the varnish left from impure fuel. However it can cause seal hardening and cracking. In too high of a percentage it can cause severe damage to engine components. The best I have found for fuel system cleaner is Berrymans.

But this is-might be part of teh problem, if teh fuel filter isn't changed at regular intervals the filter can start to disentegrate and clog injectors with material that cannot be removed.

Fuel pressure is another thing to check, any good grease monkey should have teh gauges to check and a spec on the Min-Max pressure.




http://www.ne-ethanol.org/ethfaqex.htm

http://www.solardome.com/SolarDome22.html#anchor166103
 
yeah rami, as steevo said go down to ur local car shop or garage or place that sells the bottled goods for cars and get the fuel system cleaner, then follow the instructions on the bottle, most of them say to wait till u are almost empty gas, then dump it in before u fill up and then fill up then go on the highway for like one trip and go back home should be starting to get cleaner by then
 
I have the same problem with my car, but I have a small switch built-in, connected to a device that increases the amount of fuel being pumped into the cilinders. When my car is heated up, I can flip the switch back to normal mode.
 
If I'm reading this right, it is maybe turning off (stalling) when you step on the accellerator? Do you get a hesitiation when you step on the accellerator while the engine is still cold? If so, sounds like a temperature sensor, could be coolant temp affecting mixture or could be air temp (mat sensor) if the car has one. No easy fix there other than replacing the sensor.
 
If the sensors were bad the system would detect a fault and teh Service Engine Soon light would come on. They might be going bad and that can be part of teh cause also.


But teh basic fuel map for a car is enough to start and run a engine.
 
actually it turns off when i brake kinda hard... like i reverse out of my driveway and go down the curb and i brake a little and turn a little then kaboom, it turns off and some of the lights are on like oil and battery. but i know those lights don't mean thats whatswrong with my car cuz the battery and oil have been changed recently and are really good.
 
prodj88 said:
actually it turns off when i brake kinda hard... like i reverse out of my driveway and go down the curb and i brake a little and turn a little then kaboom, it turns off and some of the lights are on like oil and battery. but i know those lights don't mean thats whatswrong with my car cuz the battery and oil have been changed recently and are really good.
Sounds like the engine is not keeping the rpm's up thus stalling out when you brake, could still be a sensor issue, could also be an engine vacuum problem due to a cracked vacuum line that is only functional when the engine is cold. The lights coming on are normal after a stall, they're basically telling you that your engine is no longer running (batt light means no current from alternator, oil light means low/no oil pressure).
You could diagnose the vacuum problem easily. Go out when the engine is cold, start it up and check as many vaccuum lines as you can for obvious cracks/damage/breakage. You may even be lucky enough to hear a broken one "whistling". It may be sucking enough air that it is audible. You can alternately spray(sparingly) carb cleaner along the lines and if a broken line sucks some in, it will immediately cause the engine rpms to drop/stall. The sensor prob will still be hard to diagnose without some tools and a code chart.
 
If you are experiencing hesitation and it tries to or does stall when braking you may have a vacuum leak somewhere in the intake system. A vacuum hose could be broken and or cracked and if it's a big enough leak it can make the car hard to start.

Nissan Sentra's FI System has a Fresh Air Hose between the Throttle Body and the Air Filter Housing. They are accordion shaped in the middle (between both ends) and they CAN break between the folds. Also the Check Valve at the Brake Booster could be bad. But it could also be any of the vacuum hoses on the engine. There are about 8 of them... more or less.

Also give a good check to the PCV Valve and the hose attached to it. It is a HUGE vacuum source. And if it hasn't been replaced in a long while it can stick and cause the engine to have a hard time starting and idling.

Another thing... how is the idle? is it correct? If it is idling to low (due to worn ignition parts, such as Distributor Cap, Ignition Rotor, Spark Plugs), when you apply a large load on the engine, like hard braking at slow speeds or hard braking when doing turns or doing tight turns at low speeds, you can cause the engine to bog down to an idle that is too low to keep it running. And the Engine dies/stalls. This is of course if it is equipt with Power Steering. The Power Steering Pump puts a large load on the engine when ya turn the wheel hard or fast at very low engine speeds.

Good Luck. :)
 
Steevo said:
Gas line anti-freeze is just alcohol, teh alcohol will absorb teh water and still burn, and teh freezing point is still way lower than it gets anywhere south of teh north pole.

But at 50 degrees it isn' the problem. Proper fuel to air mixture is. Extreme cold can cause even a fuel injected car not to start easily.

Oh 50 degrees. Sorry, had finals earlier today, been suffering from an ear infection of late, and some other stuff. Read that this started occuring after it cooled down, and missed we weren't near freezing. And yeah, I usually use something else for a regular fuel system cleaning. Since moving to NM, winter weather hasn't been the issue it was in ME.

BTW, what gonaads mentioned about checking the idle would be worth doing. If it idles too low, it won't keep running.

Oh, and to the person who mentioned wind chill...I don't think the car cares about that. Wind chill effects us, because, well I looked something up to show, rather then try to explain it

http://web.syr.edu/~wrt405/normal/windchill.html

Today, cold is judged in terms of a thermometer reading. With people and other living things though, both temperature and wind speed are needed to produce a "wind chill factor". The wind chill is based on the rate of heat loss from exposed skin caused by the combined effects of the wind and cold. As the wind increases, heat is carried away from the body at an accelerated rate, driving down the body temperature. The wind chill shows how cold the wind makes exposed flesh feel capable of causing frostbite and hyperthermia.

..."Another important point is that wind chill is an attempt to measure the effect of combinations of low temperature and wind on humans - or animals. When we say the "wind chill is 18 degrees" we are not saying that the chilled object is cooled to 18 degrees. A wind chill temperature is not some different kind of temperature."

As cars aren't warm blooded organisms, they don't experience the same effects from a wind chill, that we do.
 
mmm i had a car that the power steering on full lock would drop the revs and thus stall the car only when cold ..... cure was mixture and idle related ?? (just my tupence worth).
 
actually i had a mitsubishi colt that did exactly the same thing, the issue was this, The fuel pump/filter and also a new distributor. but as a distributorcan cost almost a thousand dollars i dump the car. best bet take it to a garage have them look as you really can't diagnose a car over the net.
 
do a basic tune up:

Fuel filters
Oil filter/change
air filter(s)
new plugs and wires
pcv valve
adjust idle (if possible)
tighten/change belts

You can do all of this pretty cheaply if you just grab a Haynes manual and take your time doing it.
 
And if ya know what a wrench is...










A WRENCH not a wench. :p





But DO let us know what they turn up when ya take it into da shop. Inquiring minds wanna know. :)
 
Make that know what a wrench is, and where not to buy it... AKA, your friendly neighborhood Govco :D

Sorry, couldn't resist an opportunity to take a crack at outragious government expenditures :cool:
 
prodj88 said:
it turns off and some of the lights are on like oil and battery. but i know those lights don't mean thats whatswrong with my car cuz the battery and oil have been changed recently and are really good.
Those lights come on if the engine isn't running on all cars. The battery light means that the battery isn't being charged, and the oil light means that the oil pressure is low, both due to the fact that the engine isn't ticking over.:)
 

Members online

No members online now.

Latest profile posts

Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
Electronic Punk wrote on Sazar's profile.
Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

Forum statistics

Threads
62,015
Messages
673,494
Members
5,621
Latest member
naeemsafi
Back