What are the effects of driving a car with a misfiring cylinder?
OK. I am a gear head who loves working on cars and has done so since the 1960’s.If a cylinder is misfiring because of an ignition problem you will, in the short term, just experience a loss of power increase your fuel consumption. In the longer term, continuing to drive it that way could destroy a coil and cost you more money.If, however, the misfire is caused by an injector problem, you could seriously damage your engine. Running that cylinder too lean will cause it to overheat and potentially damage the valve or the piston. If it is running excessively rich the unburned fuel could be washing the lubrication off of the cylinder walls leading to severe wear. In either case, repairing the damage will be expensive.NEVER drive a car that has a problem. NEVER drive a car in which the Check Engine light is on. If the Check Engine light begins to flash, SHUT OFF THE ENGINE, NOW! A problem that to you seems small, if not repaired, can cause a lot of damage that will be very expensive to fix.Read your car’s manual. Do exactly what it recommends. Find a mechanic you trust. Doing preventive maintenance will cost you a lot less than repairing the damage caused by neglecting to keep your car serviced.
What are some symptoms of a bad idle air control sensor?
Idle air control valves open to allow more air to "leak" into the intake, raising the engine rpms, or close when not needed. When your AC compressor kicks in or power steering is activated as you suddenly turn the steering wheel, the sudden drag on the drive belt will bog down the engine. These systems send a signal to the engine computer telling it they are active and it then signals the IAC valve to open, which increases the engine speed. Without this occurring, the engine could struggle, or die. The IAC valve can cause weird idle issues, mess with throttle functionality or cause the car to die. Sometimes they fail, get stuck or just get all carboned up. Sometimes people have success at cleaning them, but generally it is best to replace them when bad. Idle issues and even problems with the IAC valve may not be due to the IAC valve being bad itself. An idle issue does not mean the IAC valve is bad. It is best to pay close attention to how the vehicle is acting, and then communicate that clearly and as completely as possible to your mechanic. Intermittent problems can be very hard to diagnose. Details will help. Knowing more about the vehicle in question and its symptoms (in detail) will also help in understanding more about what it is doing.
Why is a car battery essential to using a car?
One more reason that a battery is needed in a (modern) car…Cars no longer use generators, they use alternators. One very crucial difference between the two is that an alternator needs a base voltage applied to it, to work.A generator contains permanent magnets, so it’s output is dead linear…. the faster you spin it, the more power ( current) it makes. It’ll produce current from extremely low RPM ( although not much, compared to an alternator),, An alternator doesn’t have permanent magnets, it uses electromagnets. As such, the battery ( on first start up), provides energy to the magnets in the alternator,The voltage regulator’s job is to increase to increase or decrease the current to the alternator’s magnets, to regulate the output of electricity as required to power the vehicle.It should also be noted that the vast majority of vehicles do NOT make enough current to keep up with a full electrical load at low idle RPM. In the winter, when you’ve got the headlights, seat heaters, blower on high, rear window defogger, butt heater and the radio on.. Also, the electronic ignition, spark plugs, electric fuel pump, etc., all add their own load to the electrical demand. The alternator may be making 20 amp hours of power, but, if the actual load is 30 amp hours, there’s a 10 amp hour deficit. The battery is the buffer, or cushion, while you’re sitting at a stoplight, using more power you’re making. Once the light changes, and you accelerate away, the increased alternator output from the increased RPMs will recharge the battery to it’s full potential.If you were to leave your car idling in your driveway, with every electrical accessory on, after a couple of hours, it’d stall out as the system no longer had the power to run the ignition and the injectors. The battery would be dead, and you’d need a boost.Don’t ask me how I found that out.
What causes the popping sound in the exhaust of some high performance automobiles?
High-performance vehicles are dumping a lot of fuel into the engine to make all that power. When the driver quickly lets off the throttle the airflow is affected faster than the fuel flow, so for a moment, there’s still a lot more fuel than air going to the engine (i.e., the air-fuel mixture is very “rich”). This isn’t ideal for combustion and some fuel is left unburned because there’s insufficient air to get a good burn and that excess is passed into the exhaust manifold. It’s still extremely hot though and if the exhaust is free-flowing enough (another factor that high-performance vehicles are likely to have) then it will hit air while still hot enough to ignite and it will ‘pop’.Modern cars generally don’t do it unless they’re modified for 2 reasons:1> Direct-injection fuel systems react to fuel delivery changes just as fast as air changes, so you’re not running too terribly rich at any point, even on deceleration.2> Emissions control systems generally put enough barriers into the mix that by the time exhaust reaches a point where it finds more clean air to help it ignite, it’s cool enough not to do it. For the most part, if you have catalytic converters on your car (and any unmodified vehicle will), unburnt fuel will have a hard time making it beyond this point because the heat inside the catalytic converter will cause the fuel to ignite there (and drastically limit its life).