A Clutching Reality- Pt 1

 I have always been fond of Dodge / Chrysler.  I've had a couple of trucks, my wife has a 05 300, and generally, they have been pretty good vehicles.  My wife and I rented a PT Crusier in Hawaii a couple of years ago, and I have to say, it left me a little wanting.  Lacking power and a turning radius of a Kenworth truck were some examples of what were a few negatives.

 So a few days ago, one of our semi-regular customers comes in with a 2004 PT Cruiser Turbo we had never seen before.  He explained to us how he purchased the vehicle from a local car lot about 4 weeks ago and was having some trouble.  He indicated to us while driving down the road, he shifted from second to third gear when suddenly all hell broke loose.  The car started vibrating badly and the clutch no longer seemed to work properly.

 Bringing the car in to the shop and trying to work the clutch and shift gears confirmed his complaint.  Definitely some major clutch issues.  Looking through the little inspection window on the side of the clutch housing revealed the worst.  A big chunk of clutch disc was sticking out from the pressure plate.  We also realized somebody had lowered the car's ride height by cutting off some of the suspension coil springs (will have pics later)

 Distraught, the customer contacted the car lot from where it was purchased to see if they would do anything to help him out.  Aside from giving him partial trade in value for a new car, nothing.  Looks like I gotta clutch job to do.

The clutch is dust-- litterally

Once removed, the transmission was full of broken clutch pieces.  In addition, one of the axle shaft stub ends coming out from the transmission had some severe wear.  Not sure how or when this happened, but this transmission is going to need some serious repair.

Here is the blown up disc

And the dual mass flywheel

Along with this, missing shift cable retainers are also going to be needed to get this PT back in happy shape once again.  I wish the customer would have brought the vehicle in for a used vehicle inspection.  The cost of these repairs are going to likely exceed $2500.  I'm not saying a used vehicle inspection would have caught this but it would have caught other warning signs, like the cut springs.. which could be a safety issue.

More to come as the PT saga continues.

 

2003 Subaru Outback 2.5 H4 SOHC

Boxer Blues

So its been a while since my last blog.  Well summer has a funny way of doing that.  After a two week vacation to the desert southwest with my wife Kelli in our RV, my go get em' attitude with writing suddenly waned.  Well, I decided I work my way back into the saddle so to speak and found this baby above the perfect subject to get my writer's block on the defensive.

This particular 03 Subaru Outback was brought in with a complaint of intermittent rough running and check engine lamp. The warning lamp would come and go, whether or not the rough running was occurring at the time, according to the owner.  Hmm.  Whenever this light comes on... and this goes for any car built in the US after 1996, an alpha-numeric diagnostic code gets stored in the control units diagnostic memory.  Even after the light goes off, the code remains in memory for future retrieval (unless the battery gets disconnected).

Plugging into the vehicles diagnostic connector with the shop scan tool showed us a diagnostic code P0303.  This code points us to a misfire in the #3 cylinder.  A misfire occurs when any one of the criteria needed for proper combustion is NOT present, resulting in a cylinder not contributing power.  Well this certainly goes along with the rough running complaint.  Time to get dirty and do some investigations.

Removing the #3 spark plug wire and spark plug reveals some interesting information.  Click on the pics for a closeup, and you can see on the spark plug on the right has small black lines on it.  These lines are usually called tracking.  Modern day ignition systems make very high voltages. (40,000-60,000) volts to fire the plug.  This is a case where the path of least electrical resistance became the outside of the spark plug, rather than the normal path inside.  I run into this type of problem quite a bit, and it can happen to almost any vehicle.

You can see here the tracking has left marks on the plug wire boot shown on the left.  This happens because of old age, lack of maintenance, or perhaps the spark plugs were replaced without replacing the plug wire set.  I know it costs a little extra, but it can save you a trip to the shop down the road.

Whenever spark plug wires are replaced, the new set comes with a small tube of the di-electric grease. A small dab inside the plug boot will prevent the new boot from welding onto the new spark plug from extreme heat.  (Pardon the dirty thumb)

The last step to complete this job was to clean out the throttle plate.  The two photos here are before cleaning and after cleaning.  The reason they get dirty in the first place is because of vapors left behind in the engine after shutting it down ted to condense on the cooler parts of the engine.  The plate happens to be about the coolest!

This "coke" builds up over time and can cause several problems from stalling, hesitations, to idle surging.  Figured since we were making it good on the freeway, might as well make it good at idle too!

Oh yeah in the upper photo here, there is a piece of rubber caught between the throttle housing and air cleaner.  I fixed that too.

Till next time.....  Chris