Hyundai Elantra 2000 - Engine Problem

[mightymicra]

Hellooo Guys,

Its been some time since I have posted a problem. My friend has a Elantra 2000 model and its has not been in a good running condition since i have known. Its milage is somewhat lower than usual. He is not much of a car guy and he has been taking it to every one suggested anything and spent heaps and still having the problems. Hope you guys will have some answers on this. I am really keen to help him on this.

Ok. Here is the problem.

1) It has a starting problem. in Cold start first time starts for a second and stalls. Then second time it starts fine.

2) there is a vibration after starting and in few seconds it somes to a decent idle state.

3) The big problem started yesterday when it was drving fine but suddenly stopped. It was hard to start. Even when started there is a huge shake and sounds like its working on 3 cylinders. There is a major loss in power also. Hear indicator is normal but the interior keeps up heating (I do not know if this is related to the latter problem).

4) In the above case the RPM rarely go above 2000 and the "Check Engine" light keeps flashing.

Can you guys please give me an idea to start with this ??? Thanx......

[Crosswind]

0. Lower odometer reading doesn't mean the mileage is low. It may be tampered with. Especially recondition cars imported from Singapore were mostly used as Rent-a-cars in that country. So it's not unusual for a car to do about 100k in one or two years.

1&2. My guess is you got rust or moisture in a fuel rail or in the petrol tank or somewhere due to bad fuel. When your car is parked, little bit of rust or moisture forms overnight and when you start the car, all of it goes with the petrol to the engine. That makes the engine act weird and stall. Once clean petrol starts coming in, the engine works fine

All this is with the assumption that your mechanics have done the standard things like cleaning injectors, checking for compression etc.

3&4. Nothing to worry about. Either one of your spark plugs/plug wire or the ignition coil is bust. Could be unrelated to issue 1 and 2, because it just happened yesterday.This will make the check engine light come up.

This is my diagnosis based on very limited knowledge. Do wait for others to respond.

[mightymicra]

Thank you very much for the start off...yeah I wm waiting for others openions also. I did not post all the story since it will be bored and some may be even wont read it. I will let you all know the symptoms one by one as the discussion goes on.

One time he took the car to a machanic and he cleaned the fule pump and the oxygen sensor and also said that he has reprogrammed it and changed some chip (This I have some doubt). How ever the problem dissapeared along with the check engine light. but the light cam up few days later and the worst case happend yesterday as I mentioned earlier.

Hope you guys have more ideas with this issue.

Thanx again..

[Dinukap4]

I would start with checking the Spark plugs and the spark cables.

[maheshw]

i would suggest on few things.

re-check the things related to efi clean up including plugs,wires,distrubutor,fuel filter.

do a scan for find any faults in sensors. while doing these you will be able to find where the fault coming from. better to consult a good mechanic this time.

Good luck.

[Rumesh88]

One time he took the car to a machanic and he cleaned the fule pump and the oxygen sensor and also said that he has reprogrammed it and changed some chip (This I have some doubt). How ever the problem dissapeared along with the check engine light. but the light cam up few days later and the worst case happend yesterday as I mentioned earlier.

All this is with the assumption that your mechanics have done the standard things like cleaning injectors, checking for compression etc.

Wow! the mechanic seems to have gone beyond the standard things and reprogrammed and even changed a chip in ECU!. If he was capable of doing all this after a proper analysis, he should have solved the problem by now. These are just gimmicks by some of the mechanics to extort money from unsuspecting vehicle owners.

What do you mean by " Heat indicator is normal but the interior keeps up heating"?

[mightymicra]

Rumesh...Yeah my thought was same...nways we cannot judge a mechanic at a glance and I also do not have huge experaince on EFI. How ever thank you for all who gave thair comments. I will start by cheking spark plugs and wires. I mean by "Heat Indicator" is the water temperature. It did not seem to go beyond the "half" level but I felt resonable maount of heat aroung the glove box and the shifter. May be it isnt directly related to the fault. I mentioned them just to see it would ring a bell to someone.

Thank you for you all again..Please keep posting and I will also let you know on the progress. Since this happend yesterday I will start diagnosting probably from tomorrow.

May be "crosswind" have more opinions ???

Regards.

Edited January 21, 2013 by mightymicra

[The Don]

I think the lights on the dashboard come up because the engine is stalling, or a cylinder is misfiring. This should be fairly easy to diagnose and does not require an EFI specialist.

In my car the issue was one of the wires leading to the electronic ignition system (in my car there is a distributor like device rather than coil packs on individual cylinders) causing one of the cylinders to misfire.

In EFI cars my recommendation is always to move to check the diagnostic system via a scanner once the immediately obvious is ruled out (like failing spark plug, HT wires, coil packs, contacts in the distributor, fuel line fuel filter problems, fuel pump, throttle body carboned up and not operating properly, pre ignition knocks due to carbon build up in the engine)

[mightymicra]

Hellooo Guys,

Thank you all for the comments and advises. I went through it in the weekend and It wasnt bad as I thought it would be. I came across the problem as soon as I removed the top cover. I noticed that power conntetor to one ignition coil was damaged and it has disconnected. This was the cause to not to fire the two cylinders. When I check the connectes they were badly degraded and became dust as soon as I touched them . I removed the connecters and plugged them only with the metal pinns. (This is temporary, have to find a connector or a wire harness that could replace this). Anyhow now the engine is firing all cylinders.

Yet, it still has the rough idle issue, and the low milage issue. Hope to have some ideas from you guys to clear out these problems also.

Thnx

[Rumesh88]

Hellooo Guys,

Thank you all for the comments and advises. I went through it in the weekend and It wasnt bad as I thought it would be. I came across the problem as soon as I removed the top cover. I noticed that power conntetor to one ignition coil was damaged and it has disconnected. This was the cause to not to fire the two cylinders. When I check the connectes they were badly degraded and became dust as soon as I touched them . I removed the connecters and plugged them only with the metal pinns. (This is temporary, have to find a connector or a wire harness that could replace this). Anyhow now the engine is firing all cylinders.

Yet, it still has the rough idle issue, and the low milage issue. Hope to have some ideas from you guys to clear out these problems also.

Thnx

Good to hear that you were able to spot the trouble. Now that you have solved the basic issue how about asking the guy who "re-programmed" the ECU to normalize it LOL! BTW according the history you've described here the mechanics must have tried to compensate for the rough idle/engine missing by adjusting various other things. So the best thing is to get the engine tuned - at least cleaning of the IAC valve and setting of the correct throttle position (particularly if it has been meddled with).