Hey all,

I'm new here, but I've been around for a while...

I faced few problems in the last few days and would like to look for help from you guys in CL.

I have a 01 LS430 for the past 3 years, did all services " oil changes, plugs change and belt change... " in the past month I did change all plugs after facing " multi cylinder missfire ",also changed trans oil & filter..

Car ran smothly for 2 weeks around 500 miles without problems...

Yesterday I took it for a ride and after driving for around 50 miles on the highway at 80 miles/h I pulled over for gas.. as soon as the car reached less than 5 miles/h I noticed shaking in the engine & power loss .. RPM went down between 200~300.. and when I pressed on the gas I noticed a weird sound coming from under the car " exhaust maybe "..

after hitting the highway again i noticed that I needed to floor the gas just to make the car get to 60 miles/h and that took a loooong time the speed meter was going up like tortoise
the "check engine" ligh kept blinking for the whole time..
when I got back home I stopped then shifted to Reverse and the car stalled had to turn it on again and it took few shots to get it running.. then when I parked I noticed that the air comming out from the exhaust was strong " like an air blower " and it was intermittent " blow-stop-blow=stop ".. here is a link to the sound. "hope it works"


also the engine shaking wouldnt stop... another thing was a lil bit of smoke smell came from the enging side then stopped..


I'll take it to a mechanic tomorrow, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, your help is appreciated

 

I'll guess a catalytic converter has failed and plugged one of your exhaust pipes. Betcha! Sorry for your problems.

 

Hey thanx for the reply. I'll be sure to look into that first.

But the question is! I it safe to drive the car in that condition?? :S

 

Have it towed to the garage. You may be able to remove the O2 sensors and drive it there slowly.

 

any chance you put some bad gas in there?

 

Serious misfiring, highly doubt its a clogged cat, likely an electrical malfunction of a sensor or something... Sounds like more than one cylinder is misfiring...

 

The problem is the garage is 100 miles away from the place im staying at...

I will tow it..

For the gas.. Im using the same gas for the past two years! I highly doubt ita gas related

I'll have the garage read the codes and will update you here


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Just got the car towed, will post the problems they discover in the garage..

 

Looks like the reason for the problems is that the injectors were allowing too much gas into the cylinders wich resulted in frying the spark plugs & shaking :S how could this happen -_-

 

I'm no expert, but if it was running really rich then either the motor is misreading the amount of air coming in or the O2 sensors are misreading the combusted mixture going out. The basics include making sure your air filter, MAF and throttle body are clean. I doubt its a problem with the injectors, since you're having the issue with multiple cylinders, correct?

 

well, latest thing they did was taking down the engine because they couldnt figure out what was wrong :S

I hope they find out whats wrong

 

Any update on this?

 

I am interested too, last post was "taking down the engine."
Does that mean removing it from the car?
rebuilding it out of the car?
working on it in the car?
Sounds like a lot of money.

 

ok! latest update on this topic...

They removed the engine from the car.. opened the top half " dunno name "
they found that there are two problems.
1) new injectors not calibrated " allowing too much gas into cylinders "
2) one of the valvues/rings was cracked

the garage guy told me that getting a new part then cutting it to make it fit the size, and all the work that he need to do will take around 1000$ AND he's not sure that will fix the problem...

the other solution he offered me was to use another engine from a junk shop " it was from a recently crashed car.. but it's engine was in a perfect shape "
and everything would cost less than 1K$...

So I went with the second choice " Swaping the whole engine"...

After the swap, everything looked perfect... until the Check Engine Light & VSC Off lights came on...
they checked with scanner, and everything was normal, then they reseted the error...

when turning the car on again same problem appeared, the VSC OFF light is there without turning the engine on... just the ignition is set on ON" Engine off"
and another problem is the " Gear indicator " does not show the gear on " P " park, all other lights are on as you can see in this video

what I noticed was:
1) car can be turned off & Key can be removed.
2) shifting from P to R : the auto Lock does not function
3) When the car is on P, I can't set the chair position to any number

I will try jumping the OBD connectors as I read somewhere...

and will see what happens later...


any Idea ?

 

this wont solve all problems but first great step
go to walmart and buy the chevron techron fuel system cleaner not the fuel injection cleaner
i have heard this helps with emissions, i know it helps with bad gas and water in the tank, and also cleans the intake valves, and the injectors
put it in with 10 to 15 gallson gas always put the bottle of cleaner in first then fill the gas.
i know this wont solve your main issues but it will help as a baseline

 

I do use fuel injector cleaners in a couple of gas fills and system cleaner in a few more fills...