I know I do not have very many posts here on this site, but I'll catch everyone up. When I joined I spoke about getting a four door Summit. Well that came and passed. My friend got a new car and his mom's boyfriend wants it for either scrap or his own personal use, whatever that may be.
In August I got this 1994 Dodge Colt Base (I believe it is).
The next day I have the engine bay looking like this..
..because this..
..had this!
I got the engine bay stripped.
I painted the engine bay.
From there I bought an engine out of a junkyard for a decent price and this is the final product.
That picture has probably been taken in the last month. Now, I started driving the car. It ran like crap the first time I drove the car on the road. I blamed old gas that had been in the tank for this, plus very little gas at that!
So the first place I went was a gas station. I filled it with 89 octane, then put some gas treatment (NAPA Brand, red bottle), in it. I then got a rough/surging idle.
I drove the car maybe 200 miles that night. It was doing decent on MPGs but I knew it wasn't up to par. I only know that because I had to put more gas into the tank. Put it this way, it was $32.xx to fill it, when I "topped it off" it was $18.xx.
On the way home it threw a CEL. I went to a shop the following week to have the code read. With all the necessary connections the car called for, a shop tech could not get the ECU to communicate with the Snap-On scanner. He said to check for a fuse that would cause this.
People on other forums said they have never heard of such things. So I am lost myself.
I tried Sea-foam and that didn't seem to make a bit of a difference. If anything, since then the MPGs have gotten' worse!
Since last week when I was down to an 8th of a tank after filling the car on Monday (I parked the car Thursday), I was driving my GS-T. I bought a coolant temp sensor.
I thought the one that came out looked kind of bad. I disconnected the negative on the battery to clear the codes, and not 5 minutes after reconnecting the battery and starting the car, the CEL came back.
Alright I said, o2 sensor time. I bought a new one at work (NAPA), but had to order it from Atlanta. Okay, as long as it's right. Noooooooooooooooooooooope.
They ordered me a non-heated, two wire sensor. 100% wrong for this car. Alright, it is obvious by the amount of soot on the old sensor, either it wasn't working or the running rich situation for sure took it out. I had a spare used one from the junkyard motor in our shed. I grabbed that, cleaned it with o2 sensor safe Carb Cleaner and threw that in. Once again I had the neg. battery terminal disconnected to clear the codes as I worked on the car.
It cleared the code, I started it up and changed the distributors clocking to make sure it was idling and revving nicely. I also slightly adjusted the BISS screw.
Driving around town the engine has a shake to it. 50 MPH and above there is no shake. If anything, I noticed it was much more smooth than before. I almost want to say it has a little bit more power. I have no way to prove this though. It once again idles as it did before, and puffs black soot at idle. It, by smell, can be recognized that it is running very rich. And yes, the CEL came back on after about 5-7 minutes of driving around.
Now can any of you guys tell me where to look for this stupid "fuse" that would some how effect the ECU's ability to communicate with an OBD1 scanner, or just the port itself?
Or possibly give me a better idea on what could need to be replaced? I'm past lost now.
Thanks for reading my book!