Good evening all,
Car is a 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer OZ Rally with a manual transmission, 132,000 miles. It’s the wife’s car, she loves it to death, and its been a very good car to us. Timing belt was changed at 70,000 miles, so its time to do it again and I’ve got all the parts ready.
Had been running fine, then the wife takes it to McD’s and it started bucking / stalling as she pulled out of the drive-thru. Check Engine Light (CEL) was on, one stored code P0441 - Evaporative Emission Control System Incorrect Purge Flow and had a pending code of P0304 - cylinder #4 misfire.
Took me about half an hour to get from work to the McD’s. When I drove it home, it acted fine for the first mile or so. As it got warm, it feels like the ignition is cut off completely for a split second then everything is normal again. I’d call it bucking, but it only happens once. It will do it once, then doesn’t do it for maybe 5 or 10 seconds, and then does it again.
It is very intermittent - it will do it two or three times in 30 seconds, then not do it for 60 seconds, then do it again.
Car idles fine even when warm. But it did stall once pulling it into the driveway. I can warm the car up in the driveway, it will start doing it, then it will stop and I can sit in neutral for 10 to 15 minutes with no issues. Idling, foot on the gas holding constant RPM, it doesn’t matter.
This evening, I changed the plug and wires and cleared the codes. The plugs were worn, but looked fine. The car certainly idles better…but still does it. I ran it around the block a couple of times, and once it got warm, it started doing it again. CEL remains off. But, looking thru the service manual, I did not hit the magic speed/time requirements for the computer to complete the diagnostic cycle, so that might not mean anything.
I can floor it and row thru the gears and acceleration feels normal, so I don’t believe it is a weak fuel pump. I do have a new one on the shelf, bought months ago when I thought the pump was making a weird noise, so I may just change it anyways. Mitsu gets a gold star for making the fuel pump replaceable without dropping the tank after you remove the rear seat cushion - thank you Mitsu!
Past that…the only things I think would seemingly cut the ignition would be a sensor - crank position sensor or camshaft sensor. The throttle position sensor might could do this, but I doubt it, as I couldn’t find any sort of dead spot when I was playing with the RPM in neutral in the driveway.
Thoughts?
thanks much,
ben