Hello,
newbie here

since the last few days, without any warnbing and no matter at what speed I'm cruisin', my car (2001 Protege) suddenly stops accelerating (no matter how repeteadly I press the accelerator, and then "dies". It won't turn back on for a while no matter how hard I try. It's as if the engine stops receiving gas. It does make a "bubling/boiling" kind of sound (not sure how to explain it, it seems to come from the air filter area), when I'm trying to turn it back on. Once it turns on it can run without any problems for a couple of days until all of a sudden it does the "non-accelerating/engine dies" thing.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I'll finally have the chance to chek the aprk plugs and the air filter. At first I thought "maybe it's the fuel filter" but a quick search search of this forum showed me that Proteges don't have one.

Any help/assistance/guidance in this matter will be *greatly* appreciated

Hope to read form any of you gus soon
Antonio

 

do you smell gas at all when it happens? that could indicate that an injector is getting stuck. if you don't smell gas and it stutters a little then dies, could indicate ignition. what mileage is the car at?

 

Not precisely when it shuts off but I did notice gas smell after getting outof the car a couple of days ago.

Regarding the ignition, will it cause the car to sudenly shut off when driving?

Car mileage's 104,086

Thanx for your attention

Antonio

 

ignition shouldn't make the car shut off all of a sudden, it should just make the car harder to start and run a little rough. i wouldn't rule it out completely though. the mileage suggests that you have some routine maintenance coming up. i would work on that maintenance which includes the ingition and fuel systems, mainly the fuel pump and the coil packs. when you do that, you should check to see if any of the wires arefrayed at all. that could cause the plug wires to short out before the spark is delivered.

is the car throwing a check engine light at all? if so, the car is new enough that the auto parts store should be able to pull a code for you and that will tell you where to look.

a test that you can do is when the car dies, pull the spark plugs and see if any of them are wet with fuel. one will be more noticably wet than the others if an injector is stuck

 

Hello,

Thanx for the hints. Errm any hints as to how do I check the fuek pump and coil packs? (that's a "do it yourself " kind of thing right?)

Speaking of maintenance I changed the spark plugs and air filter today.
Regarding the check engine light, no, it hasn't come up none of the times the car shut off.

Now I have to find the time to check the fuel pump and coils as suggested. I'll see if I can check out the spark plugs wqhen the car shuts off again (hope it doesn't do it anytime soon)

Thanx so much for your suggestions.

Antonio

 

Is the engine overheating when this power loss and stalling occurs? An engine that is overheating can cause both of those problems and will not restart untill engine has cooled back down. Temp gauge should be fairly centered and pretty much stay there once engine reached operating temperature. The bubbling/boiling sound could well be from the coolant overflow bottle which is right next to air cleaner. Coolant that is boiling in the block will be vented to the overflow bottle where you could be hearing this noise. Check the coolant level when it is cold both at overflow bottle and remove the radiator cap to check level there as well. Low coolant, a thermostat sticking closed intermittently, or having just water only in the cooling system can all create overheat conditions. Todays cars run at much higher temperatures then in the past and just have water in the cooling system is no enough. Fans do not even come on untill neaarly 212'F at which point the water in the block is already boiling.

 

Temp gauge hasn't given me any indication of overheating, it's always somewhat centered. However, and now that you mention the whole overheating thing, last time it stalled there was some whiteish smoke coming from inside the engine (wasn't able to pinpoint from where exactly it was coming but it definitely wasn't form the overflow bottle. That was the first thing I checked and the levels were normal.)

Also I only have water in the cooling system so maybe I should flush the whole of it and replace it with coolant according to your suggestion.
Thanx for your help, I'll keep you posted regarding your suggestions guys!

Antonio

 

Go buy the Prestone yellow premixed (50-50). Having only water in the cooling system is suicide.

 

if the fluid levels are a little low, the temp gauge could be inaccurate. check to see if the fan is kicking on or not. that could have caused you to boil the fluid if the fan isn't cooling properly.

there is a place where you can hook up gauges to test the fuel pump, but if you don't have the gauges, a mechanic can run the diagnostic on it for about $50. the coil packs are just something that you have to feel for. the car will stutter kind of like it is having a transmission problem, but the engine will miss whereas the engine will idle high then make the car jump while you are driving if it were a tranny or cv problem.