anyone good with GM 3.1L engines?

[VOA_NIGHTMARE 10+ year member]

my 1998 Lumina is a P.O.S., the battery is under the windshield wiper fluid, which in turn is under the strut bar, and to get to the sidemount terminals you have to move the air filter out of the way... Way to go GM on fukin car audio people over....

I had a 1998 plym breeze. In order to change the battery you had to TAKE OFF the right front wheel and take off the plastics just to get to it. Talk about some bs. They say that it is a safty thing when there putting bats all over in diff places just for safety.

 

[sumone 10+ year member]

here's some pics of my tires. I don't got rims or dubs or anything, so don't be surprised. that first pic is of the gasket. I forgot which tire was what so I just listed them in any order.

when I add air to my tires, do I want all of 'em to be 32? cause recommended is 29/26 for front/rear. the thing says a higher psi gives better fuel economy but a more rougher ride.

also, I measured and actually wrote down instead of trying to remember:

front right - a little less than 28

front left - about 27

rear left - a little less than 26

rear right - exactly 26

and how important is it for the tire pressure to be consistent? If one tire is .5-2 psi off from another, is that that big of a deal?

fuel injector cleaner...never heard of it, but I'm gonna guess and say it has to do something with cleansing the fuel injectors?

It's funny too cause after I got the fuel filter & belt replaced, I noticed a significant increase in acceleration. Now it seems like I'm back to normal - only 3 days later. I got the fuel filter replaced last tuesday and the gaskets on friday->saturday. On saturday, when I got the car back, I noticed I didn't have that good acceleration. (if it's not the car, it's the 50lb box & 2 subs I installed on saturday, which replaced a 40lb box & 1 sub).

as far as what the shop did, all I know is I gave them the brake pads, and when I picked up the car, they gave me the old brake pads, so I don't know what they specifically did. I gotta start asking, cause I thought, if you replace X, you replace X; you don't replace X, then make sure Y is good, then Z, etc.

4 wheel disk? all I know is the brake pads I bought had 4 and they gave me back all 4 of my old ones?

 

[jellyfish420 10+ year member]

1 psi differance is ok. yeah you want all of them to be 32 psi. if you have a big difference between 2 tires, like more than 5 psi. you might have a pull(let go of the wheel and it'll take off turning. taking them from from 26 to 32 will not make a noticable differance in the ride. and about the pics of the tires sorry but you cant tell anything from the pics, they're to close. what you need to do is turn your stearing wheel so the tire sticks out the side, and step back a little and take a pic across the tread of the tire.

 

[sumone 10+ year member]

ok, took 'em to 32 and still no noticeable improvement. I've now resorted into trying to get one of those obd sensor / data capture scantools (off ebay, of course) cause there's no dtc codes being thrown. today, fuel was at halfway (tripmeter @ 109miles...1/2 a 14 gal tank into 119 miles = 15.5mpg). I reset tripmeter to 0 every time I fill to the top.

does anyone know that method you do after you disconnect the battery that lets the computer rethink stuff or set idle speed or whatever?

 

[jellyfish420 10+ year member]

i don't know if it's been mentioned, and im too tired to read through it all, but have you replaced your O2 sensor?

 

[Einzee 10+ year member]

does anyone know that method you do after you disconnect the battery that lets the computer rethink stuff or set idle speed or whatever?

the puter will re-learn within 2-3 start cycles. Start car, let idle for 2-3 mins, shut off. The next time you start car it should be all set. If not, the third time it will be.

 

[sumone 10+ year member]

have you replaced your O2 sensor?

nope. that's one of things I think is pretty significant too after you mentioned it, cause I was reading through the haynes manual and they were like it can become dirty due to an antifreeze leak...which is what I had to get the gaskets & water pump replaced. I spent 3 hours last night reading through that thing...good stuff. starting to think of the car as a machine where every part has a function instead of just a "black box".

 

[jellyfish420 10+ year member]

id take it out and test it. the book you got tells you how to test it...right?

 

[sumone 10+ year member]

yup it tells you...however one thing both of them aren't that good at / descriptive with is how to get to the different parts in order to test them and stuff; but I can work it out.

 

[jellyfish420 10+ year member]

you have to take the o2 sensor out of the car to test it. i'd definatly try that.

 

[sumone 10+ year member]

then again...I just ordered an autoxray 4000...:chuckles: ...so I'll just try to intrepret the numbers from that... //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[jellyfish420 10+ year member]

you figured out anything yet?

 

[sumone 10+ year member]

basically, not much...can't even do the o2 sensor test and the amount of data displayed isn't much (only like 15 different things). so the 300 I spent on the xray wasn't worth it....

also, no dtc codes were in the pcm's memory either

tried to get to the o2 sensor before the cat-converter but wasn't able to (however, I didn't really try that hard)...

however, one thing I noticed is that from a completely cold engine, the xray says the fuel system is in closed loop, which is odd cause I thought that you're supposed to be in open loop until the (heated) o2 sensors come to operating temperature.

it does tell me the voltage that the sensors reveal but they range so drastically I don't know how to intrepret them.

so basically my next course of action is:

1) disconnect the battery for a while, then reconnect it and see if the check engine light or dtc codes are rethrown

2) buy some fuel injector cleaner

3) visually inspect the o2 sensors

...an unrelated question....

is the starter motor the thing that gives that loud sound on startup? or is that just in the engine? the sound I'm talking about is the "cranking" sound. mine sounds so scratchy and stuff...I want it to be smoother and softer...but if we're talking about more stuff than I want to get into it...forget it.

 

[1972ChevyGuy 10+ year member]

The selanoid (

 

[jellyfish420 10+ year member]

ya, i'd change the o2 sensor.it is supposed to be open loop till they reach temp. most of the time you have to have a "special" o2 socket to get the dam n thing out.

oh ya, and the starter would have nothing to do with low gas milage. it only affects you starting your car, after you start it, it has nothing to do with anything, till the next time you start your car.