2002 Imapala, no acceleration.

[jamesbond007]

Hey guys! My friend is about 250 miles away in a small town up north and their Chevy dealer closes at 4:30 and will not look at his car till Monday. The car is a 2002 Chevy Impala with about 95,000 miles on it. He's recently had some acceleration/lack of horsepower (umph) recently and has had the car checked out. He recently replaced the battery as his was dying. This helped some, but only temporarily. He brought his car in for some maintenance and they put in new spark plugs, checked the alternator, did some fluid flushes I guess, and it has been working fine for about a week.

Fast forward to today. He drove his girlfriend up back to her hometown to meet with her parents one last time before leaving for a few months for a Study Abroad trip in Europe. They are very close and it's tough for him. THEN to add more fuel to the fire, he tries to leave and is faced with car problems. He cannot get above 40MPH, so interstate speeds are unattainable and he can't come back home. He's having the same lack of acceleration/power issues again, but he says they are far more accented.

Any ideas on what might be wrong? He says there's a few auto shops up there that are open for a few more hours and he's going to try to talk to them to see if they can't help him get on the road.

Thanks for *ANY* useful suggestions!!!

~Travis

 

[spidey07]

Check all spark plug wires and hoses?

 

[Arkaign]

Vacuum? I'd think it's gotta be something related to getting fuel/air to the motor. Are there any unusual noises, clunking, scraping, anything at all like that?

 

[jamesbond007]

He says they look snug as far as he can tell, but he's on his way to an autoshop so he can take them out and inspect them.

Upon some Googling, I see that it may be a catalytic converter (do new cars still have these? I'm not a grease monkey...) or a fuel pump/filter issue as well.

 

[jamesbond007]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Vacuum? I'd think it's gotta be something related to getting fuel/air to the motor. Are there any unusual noises, clunking, scraping, anything at all like that?

I've been in the car when he's had this issue in the past and there's no odd noises. It's like sitting in the car with a gas-powered RC engine trying to move the chassis! You can push the pedal down all you want, but nothing much happens.

 

[Arkaign]

Suggestion, but wait on this until it can be confirmed by ZV and others to be a good idea :

Spray some berrymans' (or whatever brand) starter fluid into the air intake funnel (usually pop open the air filter box, and fire the spray into the direction that goes into the intake). My brother-in-law's Volvo wouldn't start up the other week, and we were able to clear the issue with the help of this stuff. He'd run low on fuel, and it must have clogged some crud up further down the fuel lines, because after we hot-started it with the spray, he had all kinds of smoke and black fluid spraying out of the tailpipe. Car runs like a million bucks now though. Pretty cool.

I'd wait for a 2nd on this idea though, and obviously a check to see that the fuel pump is priming correctly and to go ahead and replace the fuel filter if it's been a little while.

 

[jamesbond007]

Arkaign, that idea sounds very cool (despite the situation). I wish I knew half as much about cars as I do about computers!

I'll run it by him and see what he thinks!

Thanks,
~Travis

 

[chucky2]

Is his air filter one big piece of dirt?

I doubt it's it, but, if you run fuel injector cleaner through the gas tank, try and get some Redline SI-1...good stuff...

Chuck

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Originally posted by: jamesbond007
He says they look snug as far as he can tell, but he's on his way to an autoshop so he can take them out and inspect them.

Upon some Googling, I see that it may be a catalytic converter (do new cars still have these? I'm not a grease monkey...) or a fuel pump/filter issue as well.

I dont think that's the problem but vehicles not only still have catalytic converters, but they have even more of them. Heck, our 04 Expedition has 4 of them..

 

[cardiac]

Change the fuel filter first, then check for proper fuel pressure. A completely clogged catalytic converter will give the exact symptoms he has, but it is rare....

 

[zoiks]

One of your spark plugs might have gotten shot.

 

[jamesbond007]

Just an update for you guys:

My friend is staying another night at his GF parent's house. I fell asleep and he left me a message saying that the car was in another auto shop that will look at it first thing in the morning!

It'll be interesting to see what they say or do! I'll keep you all posted.

 

[LTC8K6]

Transmission slipping?

 

[summit]

its an impala with 95k miles on it? sorry just had to throw that out there.

 

[MovingTarget]

Could it be that some of your fuel injectors are clogged or not operating properly?

 

[jamesbond007]

The shop says it was his catalytic converter! Apparently, since he had some bad spark plugs and battery and ran it like this for a while without checking it, the catalytic converter became clogged! (don't ask me how or why...) Can anyone explain how or why this would happen when electrical components are involved? I really would like to know more about cars!

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. He is on his way home now and says it's like a new car! He says there's just so much power behind the wheel now. It's the 3.8L version, which is suppose to be pretty snappy.

You know, I remember him telling me when he first got the car about some shifting problems. The car would jolt a little bit when it would change gears. Would have this been a sign of the catalytic converter going bad or needing repair? He seems to of had all this other maintenance work done and then he always says it's fine again. Maybe it's the placebo effect kicking in...

He also drives his cars pretty hard. He accelerates off the line considerably faster than the rest of the cars on the street. He doesn't peel out, per se, but he drives rather speedy. Would this attribute to any considerable amounts of wear and tear?

 

[Squisher]

I had a '81 Camaro that clogged up the cat so many times in the first 36K miles that I put a bypass pipe on it as soon as it went out of warranty.

 

[slag]

I laugh at those who mock the reliability of the gm car line.

That 3.8 is a very very good engine.

 

[Midnight Rambler]

I laugh at those who mock the reliability of the gm car line.

So do I, but unfortunately, way too many people only believe what the *usually* un-informed media tells them. And it's cost several hundred thousand Americans their jobs.

Most of those same people are unaware of, or conveniently ignore, the fact that "legendary" Toyota is currently in the midst of a period of horrible reliability, so much so that they are seriously tweaking their vaunted TPS system. Truth be told, it's mostly down to the same thing that GM experienced ... massive production growth in a short period of time overwhelms the "system".

As for the 3.8L ... yep, it's a great motor, and served a long time. Any doubters need look no further than the Grand National / GNX !

 

[Demo24]

Originally posted by: jamesbond007
The shop says it was his catalytic converter! Apparently, since he had some bad spark plugs and battery and ran it like this for a while without checking it, the catalytic converter became clogged! (don't ask me how or why...) Can anyone explain how or why this would happen when electrical components are involved? I really would like to know more about cars!

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. He is on his way home now and says it's like a new car! He says there's just so much power behind the wheel now. It's the 3.8L version, which is suppose to be pretty snappy.

You know, I remember him telling me when he first got the car about some shifting problems. The car would jolt a little bit when it would change gears. Would have this been a sign of the catalytic converter going bad or needing repair? He seems to of had all this other maintenance work done and then he always says it's fine again. Maybe it's the placebo effect kicking in...

He also drives his cars pretty hard. He accelerates off the line considerably faster than the rest of the cars on the street. He doesn't peel out, per se, but he drives rather speedy. Would this attribute to any considerable amounts of wear and tear?

My best guess will be that since he had bad spark plugs in there and ran it for a decent amount of time that meant the engine wasn't working efficiently. It probably was not correctly burning all the fuel and thus the waste would go out the exhaust and eventually into the cats, which would clog up over time.

Probably could have been prevented or at least delayed for awhile if he had maintained it better.

 

[jamesbond007]

Slag and Midnight Rambler, I couldn't agree with you more! I went for a 'test drive' last night and it was really nice!!! Definitely very peppy, now. The engine sounds absolutely great when we went on the onramps and gave it some gas!

Demo24, you are exactly right! My friend had the mechanic explain to him what happened. He said that the fuel wasn't burning/ignighting properly and the excess was clogging up his motor/exhaust.

~Travis