I don’t like the sound of this

[SteveJJH]

Over the last few days my cars been juddering and misfiring when its below 3000rpm. At first it just felt like a flat spot in 5th at around 2500, but this morning it would not drive smoothly at any throttle position below 3000rpm in any gear.

The fuel was low (ish, see separate string) so after about 20 miles I filled up with Optimax and the problem seemed to go away.

I used to do short journeys in the car but Ive recently started doing long journeys to and from work every day.

It had a major service earlier this year, so I dont think it should be the ignition components or filters or anything. Are these worth changing anyway?

I really didnt like the sound of it, I didnt think I was going to make it to work (oh no), but genuinely Im worried about my poor old Clio, has it just developed a taste for decent petrol or is there something more serious happening?

 

[ChavyBoy]

You ran out of fuel didnt you. Maybe its cr4p in the fuel line from the bottom of the tank ?

 

[BRUN]

replace your fuel filter as this may now be clogged cos of all the crap you dragged off the bottom of the tank by lettin it run low, never let it run low, lowest mine ever gets is 1/4

id also use a good fuel treatment like the Wynns Extreme stuff, its expensive but a lot more potent than the other cheap ones

if that doesnt sort it check the condition of your air filter, spark plugs, and dizzi cap and rotor arm, also oil level

 

[SteveJJH]

The thing is i dont think ive been getting anywhere near the bottome of the tank (check another topic called "ever run out of petrol?")

Cheers for the advice anyway, if it carries on then ill change all the filters and stuff, i just hope its not serious.

 

[Simon172]

I previously had LOADS of problems just like youre describing: that was with my old scirocco. I used to run it low on fuel (weighs less!) and yep, you guessed it, it sucked up all the crap from the bottom of the tank. This included rust! all into the carb and the jets etc. It was so bad that i used to get stuck in places and was constantly changing my fuel filter as it would get dirty every 5 minutes! eventually i had to buy a new petrol tank (old one had corroded/rusted(?!). Anyway, the new tank provided the same problems! - it turned out the filler neck was metal and had corroded and rusted and was letting water into my fuel tank - This i found out at the side of the road at 2 a.m. with an AA guy shining a torch into a sample of petrol hed sucked through my system - it was something like 2 parts water to 1 part petrol! she was a steam engine! talk about water injection. Anyway, got the car towed home and we took apart the carb, there was lime scale in the jets! oh dear. So we had to pump out the fuel from the tank (about quarter of a tank - LOADS!) by using an old hand pump - took ages - into a barrel, which weighed an awful lot with just 1/4 of a tank in ! Anyway, it runs fine now and its got a new Weber carb on there with manual choke.....problem solved. Not sure how badly it affects injection engines tho - maybe invest in some injector cleaner from halfords and spray it in there?

 

[Mav]

I never fill mine past 1/4. I like Angelica to go Go-Karting Style. Theres such a difference in the amount of playng you can do between Full and near empty, fuel must weight loads!

Plus i reckon that since ive never had a full tank or half tank sittin in the car for anything longer than say a week, there cant be any crap accumulating.

If im wrong though let me know and ill change the filter again

Mav

 

[philglover]

My old Nova suffered from fuel starvation because the fuel lines to and from the tank became kinked, thus not enough fuel was reaching the engine. Just a different chain of thought??