This could be your car's problem!
Thread Starter
|
In the Staging Lanes
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 89
From: Tucson, AZ
This could be your car's problem!
I'm not sure if any body has posted about this specific issue or not, but here I go, in an effort to save you time and money!
A while back, I took a trip out of town (about 100 miles). Nothing major, just going to the next city over for a concert. The trip there was nice, just a regular cruise as expected! However, on the way back home, I had my cruise control set at about 70mph when all of a sudden my car (1999 6-speed SS) started shuttering. It was like I was stomping on the gas and letting off real rapidly. I took the cruise control off to manually operate the throttle and it would do the same thing. I quickly found out that if I kept the engine higher than 2,000rpm it wouldn't do it, and proceeded home that way. Perplexed by what was just happening, I was glad to be home with my car in the driveway and just didn't worry about it until the next day.
I got in my car, ready to go to work, and when I turned it on, noticed that I had a check engine light. Great, just what I needed. The car seemed fine, so I pulled out of the driveway and headed to work. Not a problem until I was cruising along on the freeway at a constant speed in 6th gear (later found out that it did it in any gear, as long as it was in lower rpm). I dropped down into 5th gear to raise my rpm and this nonsense stopped.
After getting home from work, I took it into a shop for a free check engine light inspection. After plugging their reader in and making a few observations, they came back and told me they wanted to do more in depth testing, but wanted to charge me $90/hour. Ha! Told them to give me my car back and I'll figure it out on my own! So I drove down to Checkers to rent one of their OBD code readers.
Turns out it was throwing quite a few different codes:
P0171 - System too lean (Bank 1)
P0174 - System too lean (Bank 2)
P0102 - Mass or volume air flow circuit low input
P0135 - O2 heater circuit (Bank 1, Sensor 1)
P0155 - O2 heater circuit (Bank 2, Sensor 1)
I tried clearing the codes, but of course I got the expected result of them coming back the next time I started the car. I tried cleaning my MAF sensor because I heard that they can get contaminated from the K&N filter by using too much of the oil. Nothing. Tried swapping my MAF sensor with another one. Nothing. I was running out of easy to do things when I decided to get on the forums and search for similar OBD codes when I stumbled accross a thread with similar problems. One of the replies to the thread said something about an under the hood fuse being blown. No way! How could I have missed such a simple diagnosis!? I ran down to my car, popped the hood, and located the tiny 20 amp ENG SEN fuse, WHICH HAPPENED TO BE BLOWN! No way could this little fuse cause that much problem!
I quickly drove down to the nearest auto store and purchased a pack of the new fuses. Threw out the old, blown fuse and popped in a new one. Still had a check engine light, but I read something about the ECU needing so many starts or miles with no problems for the codes to go away on their own. A little down that the light was still there, cruising at higher RPM on the way to work, I happened to look down at my dash..... AND THE LIGHT WAS GONE!!! I threw it in 6th gear and set the cruise control. No more problems! Yay! I finally solved the problem that was driving me crazy, and it barely cost me anything!
This happened quite a while ago, and I have yet to experienced the same problem again! However, I have a buddy with a 1998 Z28 6-speed that was telling me he was having problems with his car. He started describing it to me, and was shocked when I started telling him some of the other things his car was doing and what codes it was throwing out. I told him that I recently was having the same problem, and that it turned out to be just a fuse. Of course he didn't believe me, until I told him to pop his hood and check the fuse. Sure enough, it was blown. I gave him a fuse, and he couldn't thank me enough.
Being that both my car and his are 6-speed, I would assume that it is a problem with the 6-speeds, but I could be wrong. I had an automatic in the past, and know a few friends with automatics, and no one had the problem.
I hope this helps somebody out!
A while back, I took a trip out of town (about 100 miles). Nothing major, just going to the next city over for a concert. The trip there was nice, just a regular cruise as expected! However, on the way back home, I had my cruise control set at about 70mph when all of a sudden my car (1999 6-speed SS) started shuttering. It was like I was stomping on the gas and letting off real rapidly. I took the cruise control off to manually operate the throttle and it would do the same thing. I quickly found out that if I kept the engine higher than 2,000rpm it wouldn't do it, and proceeded home that way. Perplexed by what was just happening, I was glad to be home with my car in the driveway and just didn't worry about it until the next day.
I got in my car, ready to go to work, and when I turned it on, noticed that I had a check engine light. Great, just what I needed. The car seemed fine, so I pulled out of the driveway and headed to work. Not a problem until I was cruising along on the freeway at a constant speed in 6th gear (later found out that it did it in any gear, as long as it was in lower rpm). I dropped down into 5th gear to raise my rpm and this nonsense stopped.
After getting home from work, I took it into a shop for a free check engine light inspection. After plugging their reader in and making a few observations, they came back and told me they wanted to do more in depth testing, but wanted to charge me $90/hour. Ha! Told them to give me my car back and I'll figure it out on my own! So I drove down to Checkers to rent one of their OBD code readers.
Turns out it was throwing quite a few different codes:
P0171 - System too lean (Bank 1)
P0174 - System too lean (Bank 2)
P0102 - Mass or volume air flow circuit low input
P0135 - O2 heater circuit (Bank 1, Sensor 1)
P0155 - O2 heater circuit (Bank 2, Sensor 1)
I tried clearing the codes, but of course I got the expected result of them coming back the next time I started the car. I tried cleaning my MAF sensor because I heard that they can get contaminated from the K&N filter by using too much of the oil. Nothing. Tried swapping my MAF sensor with another one. Nothing. I was running out of easy to do things when I decided to get on the forums and search for similar OBD codes when I stumbled accross a thread with similar problems. One of the replies to the thread said something about an under the hood fuse being blown. No way! How could I have missed such a simple diagnosis!? I ran down to my car, popped the hood, and located the tiny 20 amp ENG SEN fuse, WHICH HAPPENED TO BE BLOWN! No way could this little fuse cause that much problem!
I quickly drove down to the nearest auto store and purchased a pack of the new fuses. Threw out the old, blown fuse and popped in a new one. Still had a check engine light, but I read something about the ECU needing so many starts or miles with no problems for the codes to go away on their own. A little down that the light was still there, cruising at higher RPM on the way to work, I happened to look down at my dash..... AND THE LIGHT WAS GONE!!! I threw it in 6th gear and set the cruise control. No more problems! Yay! I finally solved the problem that was driving me crazy, and it barely cost me anything!
This happened quite a while ago, and I have yet to experienced the same problem again! However, I have a buddy with a 1998 Z28 6-speed that was telling me he was having problems with his car. He started describing it to me, and was shocked when I started telling him some of the other things his car was doing and what codes it was throwing out. I told him that I recently was having the same problem, and that it turned out to be just a fuse. Of course he didn't believe me, until I told him to pop his hood and check the fuse. Sure enough, it was blown. I gave him a fuse, and he couldn't thank me enough.
Being that both my car and his are 6-speed, I would assume that it is a problem with the 6-speeds, but I could be wrong. I had an automatic in the past, and know a few friends with automatics, and no one had the problem.
I hope this helps somebody out!
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
