Remedy

This all started after driving 120 miles through Saline Valley (very rough dirt road). Back on pavement at 65mph the engine began to miss and buck. The bucking continued for 20 seconds every other two minutes. The check engine light also came on. BTW I had half tank of gas. Next day, parked in my driveway, I noticed the engine would miss and buck again at ~2500 rpms. Didn’t find any loose wires or bad connections under the hood. I pulled the codes and came up with 12, 13, 24, 31. Cleared the codes and started her up. Ran completely smooth.

Then last night, one week later, I was driving to the gas station and the whole problem came back. I limped to gas station and pumped 14.8 gallons into my 15-gallon tank. I figured if the problem presented itself when running out of fuel, it must have been bad gas or a plugged fuel filter the first time. After the fill up everything was great.

Today I can feel a slight miss (no bucking) under load. There is an obvious loss of power. I could hardly pull 35mph up a hill that I usually drive at 55. Pulling away from a stop is difficult up to 3000rpms at which acceleration seems “better”. The engine has 185k and a new HG 5k ago. There is also a high pitched whine coming from the fuel pump, is that normal? I’m not sure where to start and would like to avoid throwing money at parts I don’t really need. I’m somewhat new to wrenching, but catch on quickly. Any suggestions?

Remedy

anybody?

tps?afm?plugged cat?fuel pump?fuel filter? Any ideas?

desconhecido

Could be a lot of things, but considering the way you describe the problem I'd start by replacing the fuel filter and then checking fuel delivery and pressure.

Remedy

Replaced the fuel filter yesterday. Still a bit hesitant and a slight miss under light throttle. I'll try to get my hands on a fuel pressure guage in the next few days....

drew303

hmm, wish I was more familiar with 22RE's, damnit why do I only end up with 22R's

anyway, I have a 22R, but... the problem I had and fixed could happen to carb or EFI, its nonrelated After a hard day of wheel'n .. (dust out the bumhole) ... I too was on the freeway at 65mph =P then started experiencing the same issue you had, chugging, no power, missing, yadada

well long story short, the head was cracked on the #2 cylinder. Not a serious crack, but eventually, either the crack got bigger, or the headgasket gave way more.. I'll never known but the motor would run fine, then chug, and no real apparent serious white smoke.. then bam, one day she just gave up the ghost. Made my own rain cloud in my driveway.

It was bizarre. The chugging was very random and always happened at the worst time.

I was going to Seattle from Olympia, ofcourse its a custom to check out all the drivers and scan for a hot chick, just one, cuz i swear to god, only ugly people drive on I5 when I'm heaning north. Finallly spot some hotties in the lane next to me, they're flirting, singing, waving.. im like sweet... CHUG CHUG CHUG... insert bad word here. Ran fine the WHOLE way up. Nothing had changed, but it just started missing bad. Then.... ran fine to my destination.

=P

Motors got a new head and cam on it now, but carb and everything else is the same. So my 'chugging' was caused by a slow and bizarre coolant leak into cylinder 2.

Just throw'n that out there. Shstufff.. happens.