eric150db

hey guys,

I just moved from boston to san diego and I decided to drive my sc400 out here instead of selling it. I took my car to my mechanic and told him to check everything I need this baby to get me 3000 miles without a hitch. The car had a rough intermitent idle and an occasional hickup on acceleration. He changed the plugs wires caps rotors fuel filter drive belt and i gave him two new o2 sensors for the mains. I knew it needed those as the generic o2's i got about a year ago sucked. My trac light was on and I was getting horrible mileage, I smelt gas, and to pass emissions my car needed to be warmed up for a few minutes at 2500. So i get in my car after dropping $800 thinking the rough idle would be gone...nope. It was there but not nearly as bad. Mind you about 2 years ago i got new plugs caps and rotors so i was surprised to hear that i needed them again. So she got me to cali nice, towards the end of the trip the idle got a lil rougher and hesistation started to show up and varying rpms and speeds. The next day I hop in my car and it is just running like crap. The idle was very rough, constantly miss firing. And The entire powerband is rough now. When Im cruising its OK, but when i gas it it sputters. Do you think its the timing belt? I got the car 3 years ago , never really put many miles on it, prob 10k including the road trip. Thne guy before me told me he did a timing belt but i dont know. There is 128 on the car now. I gotta get this taken care of and I have no idea where to even look for a mechanic. I know alot of you on this forum are from cali, so if any of you could help me out with what you things wrong or a good mechanic in the san diego area that would be awesome. Thanks guys

O. L. T.

iTrader: (17)

We made a whole engine forum just for this

.......and that is where it is going.

Moved

eric150db

thanks bro my bad

PERRYinLA

Another member, who has an SC300, recently changed a bunch of similar parts to try and cure his rough engine before discovering one of the cylinders was not firing. A cylinder balance test might reveal which one is the culprit. Of course it may be something else, but it is something to try.

One factor to rule out is the timing belt- it is either intact and working, or broken and dead. There's a bunch of threads that discuss how to inspect it and when you should change it (if ever) if you want to read up on it, but it is non-issue regarding your current problem.

eric150db

thanks Perry,

where would I go to get a cylinder balance test? If one of the cylinders isnt firing and I have all of those new parts, would I just be left with a fauly injector? I hope this doesn't turn out to be a fortune, I am sick of dumping money into this car, I def cant sell it the way its running now.

Another thing I wanted to throw in there I don't know if there is any correlation. Almost everytime I get off the highway after I've been driving for a few minutes, the steering wheel gets very hard to turn much harder than a car without power steering. It will be very hard to turn for the next couple turns then it just snaps out of it. Just another thing I need to take care of with this car. The guy who owned it before me must have really beat on it. Yeah the car has never left me stranded but it has certainly not been the low maintence vehicle I had hoped for.

So do you guys think I need to take it to lexus to diagnose the problem? The toyota dealership at home was a fortune, I can't imagine here in san diego. Thanks in advance for any help guys.

Dx3

iTrader: (13)

Hey man,

Are you throwing any codes>? Have you tried to pull them to see if any are stored? Could be your MAF sensor is bad.

Have you checked to see if your PS pump is leaking?

Does the car ever lose electrical power?

Does it ever stall?

Have you checked your grounds?? My last car had terrible grounding problems which made the car hesitate a lot and die. Took a lot of time and money to find all the grounding problems, but once they were fixed the car ran well.

Jonny

eric150db

Thanks Jonny,.

No error codes. She never stalls out. The electrical system never cuts out, however if I leave the car for a week and don't drive it the battery won't have enough juice to start. My mechanic said there was a small draw but not enough for me to worry about. It could be the mass air flow sensor. My 300zx went through a couple maf sensors which they were notorious for going bad. The Z would stall out occasionally though, and the sc hasn'

I'll look into the sensor more, it def has a similiar feel to the z hesitation.


As for the power steering pump, no leaks. It freaked me out the first time it happened but now im just used to it, which i shoudnt be right i am driving a lexus afterall.

Thanks for the input guys keep it coming, you're really helping me out.

eric150db

ok guys i just took a closer look at my car. There is a small whining coming from the air filter, it looks like the last guy put on a aftermarket conefilter and kind of jerry rigged it on there. but it seems solid. Anyway the car didnt skip for about 30 seconds than it started skipping bad. I checked the pips and there was a lil white smoke, and a mild gas smell. Is that headers? I dont know it really feels electronic. This just seems to keep getting worse I''m still trying to get my feet on the ground out here in cali, and cant be dumping all my loot in this car.

PERRYinLA

Regarding the steering- there are some small passages in the steering rack that can get clogged. If you'll search here and on the LS forum, you'll find threads that discuss it in detail and how to fix them.

Regarding a cylinder balance test, your problems seems to be a bit more involved than a mis-firing cylinder, but in any case the way it is performed is by cutting the spark to each cylinder, one at a time, usually by pulling each spark plug wire where it connects at the distributor (wear insulated gloves). When you pull a wire and notice no change in the idle, that's the cylinder that is not pulling its weight.

It certainly could be electronic, or bad injectors, like you say. Or a really bad tank of gas in the past- I'd replace the fuel filter (search for threads on how to remove it) and hacksaw it apart to see what's in it.

FireCode

iTrader: (1)

Check the coil packs. I had mine replaced when the car was misfiring and acting really bad. The car runs fine now...that is ofcourse after the new tranny