Hmmm Go to  you village and sow seed with the car and see How God will give another 2011 model

yomz1e:

Hi,.
1st what colour is the smoke, if its blue greyish, you flooded engine with oil, if its black smoke , your engine is 4ked. i am a bit dissappointed on what you said that you dont care what smoke your car produces, do you know with that kind of attitude is whats killing us in Africa (pollution), we dont give 2 4ks about our environment or mother nature as long as i get your own creature comfort. I suggest you get the engine changed or rebuilt better still scrap the 4ked up car.

No two ways about it, black smoke, high fuel consumption, idling and erractic speed means dead engine. In the UK, you dare not stick the car on the road if you still value your license and i would imagine its the same for US. How does Nigerians can adopt this mentality of caring for our environment.

aloy@emeka:

Stop killing our ozone layer with that junk. Please try and dispose the junk properly because the catalytic converter is obviously bad ; look for a junk yard that can effectively crush that vehicle with minimal emission and go buy yourself a newer vehicle. No wonder Nigeria is very hot.

Pls, you two should take this thread seriously. Some people are here to learn, which should be the aim of the section of this forum.

Blue smoke means oil burn in combustion chambers. While Black smoke means excessive fuel ( excess fuel in combustion chambers). Its only the blue smoke color that should be worrisome. Because the the only way to rectify the problem is engine rebuild or replacement. But black smoke has nothing to do with the engine, no matter how thick or dark black the color of the smoke is. Its an electrical issue.

Ikenna.

poster

black smoke for me means oil burn. you need to change your engine oil. Before that get an engine flush if available in your area and also your catalytic converter might be bad.

That car need a major tune up hurry before your engine locks up.

omega25red:

poster

black smoke for me means oil burn. you need to change your engine oil. Before that get an engine flush if available in your area and also your catalytic converter might be bad.

That car need a major tune up hurry before your engine locks up.

Since when did black smoke becomes a sign of oil burn, for crying out loud? Please, there is no room for guess work when it comes to diagnosing & fixing vehicles. If you are not sure of what you are about to do or say, research on it. Car is Science and should be handled as such. Google color of smoke from exhaust.

Ikenna.

thanks guys. i have a toyota with a couple of lights on the dash. i was thinking of going under to look/changeout for the sensors myself and you guys have made up my mind. i can do it myself. at least i can try.

on another hand, one guy says he did 160-170kmph, the other did like 140kmph.

IS THAT SAFE?

i keep wondering why MC Loph lost control.

Nice contibutions peeps. My car has a similar problem to this post, in addition, i change the plugs often (lasts 4 just 2wks or less). my mechanic adviced me to drop the engine and gind the valve. i've been reluctant doing it cos i've never experienced such in my former cars. help plsssssss.

Nice contibutions peeps. My car has a similar problem to this post, in addition, i change the plugs often (lasts 4 just 2wks or less). my mechanic adviced me to drop the engine and gind the valve. i've been reluctant doing it cos i've never experienced such in my former cars. help plsssssss.

similar thing happened to my mazda 626 recently.Initially two mechanics suggested I changed the airflow meter only for us to get to ladipo and put different ones and same problem still persist.eventually it was narrowed down to the brainbox which i changed and the problem solved immediately.

Nice one Ikenna.
So how does a woman go repairing her own car herself?

My brand new Honda CRV swarm in a crazy flood in 2008 and started having issues.
Was taken to Honda Place, brain box and some other stuff was changed.
Even after spending lots of money, the car never was the same again.

I finally sold it off. The new buyer was impressed with the performance.
However, i knew that the performance wasn't at par with what it was before the flooding. I like my car perfect, don't like to hear a single noise.

I concur with you, our mechanics just like our doctors are half baked.
It's all trial and error. The DIY method is the best, unfortunately not everyone will be able to do that.

[b]I quite agree with Siena on the fact that most ECU are probably destroyed by mechanics or re wires who take pleasure in sparking the battery head of the car while the connectors are still intact.

I wouldn't want to say changing the ECU will solve the problem but rather than wasting money, time and energy in trying to get a solution that might probably not come and tendency of mechanics fingering your engine to damage, i will advice the poster to have the car tested with another ECU to eliminate the possibilities and perhaps he might get a solution.

I met octar on nairaland when his car was having the same problem and an ECU change was all it takes for him to start enjoying his camry once again

Funny enough, i was called by a nairalander who drives a Camry 98 in bayelsa with similar problem who stumbled on my post thinking i was a mechanic, we discussed at length after which i advised him to give an ECU change a try, an advice he was very grateful he did as the problem varnished after an ECU change

A fundamental problem with my 99 camry v6 was solved within a twinkle of an eye with an ECU change.[/b]


The facts up here re not scientifically proven except that we all seem to change the ECU and now our cars run fine

@ All the mech doctors.

I have this 2003 model Peugeot 206 bought new in 2003.
Till today the mileage is just 45,000+ after almost 9yrs.
It's hardly used for long distance and the engine is in top shape.

However, it's having so many electrical issues.
Headlamps go off and on when being used at night. Dashboard indicator keeps saying rear door open even though it's locked.
The dashboard indicator has suddenly stopped working.

The AC gas leaks out. The AC guy changed a couple of stuff and the gas still leaks out.
I resorted to filling the gas every month as all the AC mechs i've been to can't solve the problem.

I'm tired of all the complaints. Would have sold it but it's used for utility purpose and it's ideal.
Please who know what could be wrong and where i could fix these problems in Lag?

@ BlueDiva,

Every car brand has a peculiar issue known for. Hondas are known for auto gear issues & front swivel/ball joint failure issues. So its everyother brand. Peugeot, on the other hand, is known for electrical issues. The problem mostly are the harness connectors/plugs & poor fixed ground wires. Their wiring connectors/plugs are not water proofed. The pins inside the plugs easily get rusted. Also the ground wires easily get losed or contacts. Cleaning the harness once in a while helps to fix the electrical issues or prevent them from happening. At least, if you can get to the wiring connectors, pull out the female connector from the male connector, clean them with electrical cleaning fluid if you can & reconnect them. The warning bulb on the instructment cluster should go off or would clear whatever the problem is. Or you can pull and separate them, push them back in & repeat that 3 times. It will scrap off the rust, preventing the proper contact of the pins.

About the A/C gas leak, the possible place of leak are the condenser and the evaporator. Leak on condensor can easily be found and fixed. But if its the evaporator, am afraid, it would be a nightmare!. Why? Because, to get to evaporator, the dashboard has to come down. And trust me, you do not want to go there! it aint an easy job.

Ikenna.

^^^^
Thanks for the info.

Nothing like having a brand new car.
Our mechs are criminals, always trying to cheat one.

I wouldn't even mind if they inflate the cost of parts but get the job done.
Unfortunately, one's car always gets worse.
Rogues and quacks!

@ Bluediva,

I feel you. There is nothing like brand new car. At least, for a piece of mind for a while, before the "rouges" will start to frustrate your life. You called them rogues and quacks. Well, you are not far from the truth. But do you know what i call them? . Bunch of clowns! Why? Because the way they go about beating about the bush in engine bay or suggesting a replacement or diagnosing an unrelated thing to an issue a car is having, can be very funny at times. Most of them dont even know what injectors look like. I once opened my car bonnet then for one mechanic. He said my injectors would need servicing & was pointing at throttle body/unit. I was bafled. I asked him to show me what he called injector, to be sure of what i saw him did before & he pointed at the throttle body again and called it "an injector". Hm! I now pointed at the six injectors on the engine and asked him what were those, he said they were nozzles. I quickly slammed my bonnet & drove off as i quickly as i could. Clown!

Like i noted in my earlier post, the problem with your headlight is high resistance, I believe. Look for the headlight ground wire (negative wire to the headlight bulb), sand paper the surface and put it back, it will fix it. The wire should be grounded/attached to the body somewhere close to the headlight.

Pulling down the dashboard may not be the issue, but fixing it back correctly and plugging back all the wiring connectors or plugs to all the switches on the dashboard correctly is my main concern. Not many of those clowns can do such an intelligent/careful work.

Ikenna.

@our mechs just like our drs are mostly quacks
u have said it all, just that while Drs still get away with their sins up till now in this part of d world, it is very easy 2 know a quack mech if u meet one from his trial by error ways [ unfortunately, i was a victim of both ]

i wouldn't mind carrying out minor repairs on my car by myself but please, 4 a starter like me, from which site can i get the wiring diagram n a comprehensive toyota service manual [and/or help on how 2 know names and identify all this parts been mentioned ]

i use toyota camry 97 model  

@ ikenna, sienna, femmy or any other person i will appreciate if u guys can just fwd any useful materials on servicing and repairing to my box   mallamholy@yahoo.com

@ikena, seina, all have been inspired by various ideas been with my discuss here. infact i have a similar problem with what the poster posted earlier on

i bought a fairly used honda bullet car like two months ago,and it has never given me a prob not until last two weeks when it started emitting black smoke, it's fuel consumption increased, and it started to not do slo slow( ko se slow),  abeg help me out,  meachanics ave collected my money and still the prob is still there

infact i ave to start it for like 4mins for it to be warm before hitting the road in the morning

i stay in ibadan pls help me

i would not mind DIY method

many thanks

@ Siena,

I drive a Hyundai Sonata 2002.

I normally warm my car up for 10 minutes before driving off. I do this because I noticed the car doesn't drag when I hit the road unlike when I just start it up and drive off. Are you saying that's not a good idea for a Hyundai Sonata 2002?

Also, the same car sort off slows down or drags (again) when I'm driving up a hill or slope. I know most cars do this (as per the laws of physics) but mine is too obvious. I have driven other cars (belonging to my friends) and theirs don't drag when climbing a hill the way mine does.

My mileage is over 145k, could that be a cause to the problem?

@ Mallamholly.

Start from the begining of this thread. You will get all the info you need to fix the problem.

@ allancruise,

If you also start from the begining, you will see how i got all the manuals i have for my car, 505 V6. You will need to google & sign up with online forums of your car model. Toyota Camry has many online communities (English), likewise Toyota as a brand, Honda or Honda Accord, CRV, BMW, Chevvy, etc. You can seek for whatever manual you need from the fellow members who must have gotten it either from ebay or from a free site. Apart from the manual thing, you will also learn a lot from such sites more than here? Why? Because its specifically about the car brand or model that you drive. On those sites, they treat all sort of problems with the car models in their discussion section. People that have issues with their cars will bring out the problem. Others with similar experiences & how best they resolved such problems will be suggested to fellow members that needed the help. There too, you will find out that those whitemen you think are rich enough not to touch a spanner, fix their cars themselves. Its even a hobby to some. But here, we feel too big to think of such, but make out time to be frustrated by the clowns we entrusted our vehicles on. In those forums, they are better organised. They all have separate sections like sections for car sales, adverts & discussion. If one wants or need to look for a car to buy, he would know the section to go to. Unlike here, where everything is Jaga-Jaga. Its really quite discouraging to enter this site. Its not all the time that one have the patience to scroll through for minutes looking for a discussion like this to contribute or learn something new. So disorganised! Anyway, someone mentioned that Seal777 or so has a Camry service manual. But you will need to look for a particular model of yours. They differ, even though they might be similar in design, especially the wiring diagram.

For those that drive French cars here (Peugeot & Renault), you can join or sign up with Australian French car forum : www.aussiefrogs.com. There is no help you wont get there in keeping your French car on the road, no matter the model.

Ikenna.

Don’t forget to look at the plugs.  One might be fouled or broken.  If you continue driving in this situation, what’s next to go is your catalytic converter.  It is not designed for this manner of abuse. 

The over-filling concept is not credible, same as the cold-start-and-go where the ECU does your own responsibilities.

You cannot overfill that vehicle with gasoline by virtue of design.  The gas tank in this Camry will be one of two kinds; the very first I am inclined to believe.  That is an expansion tank that resides above the gas tank in itself as unison to accommodate excessive fuel or a sub-tank inside the main gasoline tank.  If the owner still insists to fill to the brim of the orifice after repeated cut-offs from the nozzle, a certain condition has been met.  The cap that is commonly known is not a cap but quasi in nature.  It is a valve and it is called a pressure vacuum valve.  There is a difference with the idea that exited in favour of this concept.  It will vent the gasoline when the psi in the tank is greater than one psi before the pump primes.  This is done in conjunction with the charcoal canister, where it is securely amassed till it can be safely burnt by the engine. 

The ECU does not compensate for your idle warm-up.  It will only match your rev and limit your rev as you progress in your cycle.  It has nothing to do with hydrodynamics (that is the co-existing relationship between solid mechanics/dynamics and fluid) beyond what has just been mentioned. 

90% of engine wear is at start-up.  This is due to poor hydrodynamic lubrication from thick oil & fluid flow.  The load at idle is the minimum amount of wear for the surface-to-surface contact present within the IC engine.

There is a breakdown of lubrication when the engine is started in the morning.  The crankshaft rests against the bearing until a lodge of oil has been created after the pressurised oil reaches the bearing.  The main agent for this process is the oil pump.  It takes roughly about half a minute for the oil pump to distribute oil to the entire engine (keep in mind that the oil for a few of the seconds is cold, making it harder, so the pump works at its hardest).  The layer of oil lifts the shaft off the bearing as it flows through the oil passage and fills the oil clearance within the assembly.  It doesn’t take much to figure out that damage to the crankshaft bearing (including excessive wear) will be anywhere within the engine’s lifecycle when there is continuous starvation of intended distributed oil in a dry-start.  When the shaft wears out, abnormal oil consumption begins.  This is where the some will switch to heavier oil rather than mechanical repairs.  Throughout the life of an engine, engine oil weight should never increase.  A worn shaft does not equate to tight engine crevices.  Another point to note is that cold oil does not flow as well as oil that has been warmed up for a sixth of a minute.  A spark is approx 4500degF per plug.  One of the concepts of dry-starting is that the amount of wear that can happen during this period equates to numerous hundreds of miles of high speed driving (300 to 400 miles and up, depending on how the person throttles).

On the second phase, exhaust gases that have been cooled also contribute to the wear in an engine.  The gas at cold temperature is abrasive to the walls except for normal operating temperature or acceptable level of temperature.  This is so by some laws in chemistry.  The gases should flow out of the tube with the least pressure possible.  This is where some of the etching comes from couples with the surface-to-surface contact.  In normal operation, some of these slip through (blow by) the crankcase via piston leak.  Oils and gases are not good companions under various conditions.  The PCV does not work when the engine is turned off, thus it cannot remove these hydrocarbons, so there is cohabitation till the engine is turned.  The soot itself is what is responsible for the wear in this case at cold start-up. 

Nitrogen Oxide: After a high speed drive, if you suddenly stop and kill the engine without allowing a few seconds or a minute to cool, the combustion chamber becomes exceeding hot and nitrogen will react with oxygen to give NOx.  Some cars will not allow you to kill the engine when the key is in position.  In most cases, the fan keeps rolling till the temperature drops to a predetermined phase.  On the flip side, on a cold day, you crank the engine and you take up, building heat progressively, the same process to which NOx occurs is initiated.  This is also easier to achieve when the engine is also under full load.  In a Mercedes, your power band is pegged and gears are held longer till engine comes to operating temperature.   

This is not a case of carburettor engines or injection engines.  This is an inherent limitation of the internal combustion engine.  This can be greatly reduced but not eliminated via a by-pass filtration system and oil with certain base stock.  Most people will not spend such money for that kind of oil.

Siena:

^^^ Brillian writ-up, Trac. But not put in laymans terms. I understand where you're coming from, but many here would simply be bamboozled by the over-technical analysis.

I understand where you are coming from, Siena. I did write this two or three hours ago on a sheet of paper and then made some edits when I was settled for easy absorption. When I had to type this to text-pad to avoid the spam-bot problems I face, I made edits and simplified this as far as I could. It was as simple as I could and I was very purposeful to appeal to "both parties" without it loosing its effect. The challenge here is how you can explain to a person a journal, rocker-arms and so on when they haven't seen or heard of them; let alone components of the upper engine end and lower engine end. There isn't much that can be done via words (I agree) to convey some of "these" but I'll give them the honour that they deserve it regardless.

He's back

I've learnt so much from this topic

A thousand thanks to Ikenna for all the info.

broses grammer don dey too much, dis thing na airflow meter as the car is still relatively new. change ur airflow meter sensor and tell me whatsup.
MOU automobiles
21ABF395

Hello Siena & all car experts,
please need your help, i have a toyota CarinaE wagon 1996 model which i use jus for luggage. recently, i noticed that anytime the car drives thru water it goes off and we have to wait for about 15mins before we can start the car. it starts with jerking as if fuel is not supplied in the injection.
please what do you think can be wrong with it cos mech as checked the car and they said there nothing wrong with it. we mostly afford using the car when it rain.

we need a solution to it. thanks in advance

Siena:

Sounds like an ignition issue, rather than a fuel-related one. The fact the engine stalls when driven through water, won't start till time has elapsed and jerks thereafter would suggest your ignition coil, high-tension leads, distributor cap (as applicable) are getting wet. Your solution (as I see it) is to mount your ignition coil higher in the engine bay (if it's a remote coil, as it should be on a '96 model) with a longer king lead to suit.

It would also help if you periodically spray all ignition leads, coil and distributor cap with WD-40. This water proofs the system, and displaces moisture. I would suggest you remove the distributor cap, and spray the inside as well as the rotor arm, before replacement. This should help make your ignition system more immune to moisture ingress.

Best of luck.

thanks Siena, will check and give feedback