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Really feint hesitation/miss at light throttle



jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
Hey gang,

Hopefully a quick one.

Car has been going absolutely banger since I sorted the timing. Thanks for all the advice around that.

This week I noticed a niggly thing, not an issue per-se but I would like to nail it before it potentially gets worse.

At motorway speeds in 5th gear and barely on the throttle at all, but constant.....I can feel an ever so slight miss or hesitation coming in and out. I have been super careful to make sure I am not changing the pedla but it still happens. You would almost expect it to crap out when you push the pedal but its is fine. Just on the lightest of throttle.

I have also been experiencing the hesitation when I press the accelerator from stand-still which has had me stall a few times. You know, you press the pedal when starting off and the revs drop before they pick up.....kinda odd.

Would love any opinions or areas to start looking into.

Car is nearly at 100k and has been well looked after, doesnt want for much tbh.

Cheers
J
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
Hi mods, sorry. I think this should have been in the faults section.

I have created a duplicate there, can you delete this for me?

Apologies
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
Hi gang,
This kinda progressed a little today.

Driving the kids to school, cruising at around 40 and started to accelerate gently, not ragging it or anything like that and the car completely cut out.

No misfire, no hesitation.......just dead.......managed to coast into a driveway which was a fright with no power steering. Stopped, turned the car off and on again and it started and drove fine.

What would cause the car to completely die like that guys?

Cheers
J
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
Hmmm.....speed sensor?

Would that be a tdc sensor for engine speed? Is that a likely culprit?

J
 
V

Vaughan

  Clio RS 172 2002
jinjur said:
Hey gang,

At motorway speeds in 5th gear and barely on the throttle at all, but constant.....I can feel an ever so slight miss or hesitation coming in and out. I have been super careful to make sure I am not changing the pedla but it still happens. You would almost expect it to crap out when you push the pedal but its is fine. Just on the lightest of throttle.
Click to expand...

Does the speedo needle wobble about the same time the miss/surging happens? If it's a 172 non-ESP then the gearbox speedo sensor needs changing. Not hard to change, or expensive.
BTW the speedo sensor is different and separate to the TDC sensor.
If it's a 172 with ESP, they use the ABS instead of a speedo sensor, so it's something else.
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
Belts weren't changed recently, timing was out so when I was fixing that it wasn't quite as intrusive as the full job. I was also stupid careful but will bear in mind what you said and check.

This is the non-speedo-drive version too......so abs is used

Its just the way it cut out was surprising, it wasn't like it stalled during fear change or anything..........it was 3-4k RPM with steady throttle and then boom, off..........
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
Hey guys,

Sorry to bump this again but the car cut out on me twice this morning when on the way to drop the kids to school.
Wouldn't be that big a deal if the PAS wouldn't require Thor like efforts once the car cuts out.

As soon as I pulled up to stop, the car can be restarted instantly without issue. However, there was that intermittent miss all the way home, seemingly getting better as the car warmed up.

I checked for errors again using RSTuner and nothing was shown.
Had a wee poke about and the only ropey thing i can see is rust around the base of the coil pack suggesting it might have played with water at some stage.

Could this sound like a candidate above other things? Would a dodgy coil pack throw error codes or not? Could it be intermittent and seemingly more affected by the cold?

Finally, given that I am skint, how are the ECP or motor factor coil packs regarded?

Sorry for the ramble :(

J
 
Darren S

Darren S

ClioSport Club Member
Just as a guess - could it be fuel pump related? Maybe the filter is clogged and then the power simply goes once the engine dies? When dead, the suction of the pump also dies, allowing any debris to fall away. You start the car up again and all is good - until the filter gets choked again? Pure surmising here - I might be way off, but it's accessible under your rear bench seat. Might be worth looking if it's clean and free of crap to begin with?

I think I have my old coil pack (which was working fine) - that I'd be happy to post to you. If it made no difference, at least you could rule that as a potential problem?
 
E

Ex-User (19928)

  BMW M4; S1000 RR
Do you try to restart while coasting after its cut out and it doesn't start for a while or do you just not try that?

Sounds a bit strange that you're choosing to still drive around even though it will periodically cut out? Especially taking kids in the car..

Rather than trying random parts that you don't even have why not get it checked by someone? I know you say you're skint but surely dropping £75-150 on diagnostics is safer than spending £100 on parts that might work.
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
Hey Darren, might take you up on that offer buddy....will keep you posted. Thank you.

Jeff, I have no option. This is THE only car I have.......I don't know what else to say.

With regards to coast starting, I do the safest thing I can and pull over. To clarify, it is not stalling between gear changes, it stalls while driving, so it does not bump start or it obviously would when I am driving unless I am missing something.

.......and while I appreciate that "getting it checked by someone" is fairly straight forward on the mainland, over here in Northern Ireland that is not the case :(

I have been through this before when I had ABS issues after various people telling me that CLIP is the only diagnostics that will tell anything and that RSTuner was not enough. Last time I took that advice, I left the car to Renault (the ONLY people I can find here with CLIP) for said £100 diagnostic only to be told exactly what RSTuner was saying, your ABS is broken. In that instance, Renault quoted 1600 to repair the car.

I fixed it for free after finding a short in a cable. They are not capable. If CLIP does not implicitly tell the error, they are done.

I am fairly capable with cars, I mean, I re-did the timing only a few months ago with the superb help here and the right tools.

I am just limited by diagnostics in this case buddy and am trying my best to work out the cause.

The symptoms don't stink of classic coil/plug/lead issues that I have seen in the past (used to work in a garage). Hence I am reaching out for advice and to learn. Surely that is 90% the reason this board exists.

Cheers
J
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
Ok, so I pulled the TDC sensor last night and gave it clean (as quite a few of you seem to do) and it is one of the older non-blue ones.

Wasn't really dirty per-se but I don't exactly know what sort of dirt you guys clean off. Looked a bit like a rust coloured dust......anyhoo......worst possible conditions today (snow and baltic) and the car did not cut out on me. Now, I still have that little hesitation happening which at over 100K now I would probably be putting down to injectors (maybe?) and I would guess it is too early to tell if this has sorted the issue, just thought I would note it.

If I did indeed have a dodgy tdc sensor, could that kill the car when it was running? I know the main issue from this is around starting that I don't seem to have.

I will pull the pump and eyeball it on Thursday night as I have a handbrake cable to do (yes, that went today, fml) but I do believe that my car has an external filter. I know, this is normal but i see a few have mentioned this with these cars that should not have them but do.

I would guess that at 100K and having never been done, this may very well be an item that needs done?

Will probably still grab the coil pack Darren, let me know about $$.
J
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
Am i being really dumb.................or is this not a fuel filter?

20180116_122134.jpg
 
adamlstr

adamlstr

ClioSport Club Member
I had slight miss on my 172 Cup once, that showed its head one cold morning that started as a feint mis-fire. On the 30 mile commute it gradually got worse, that turned out to be the coilpack. But, when it got really bad just as I approached work, it lost a cylinder and threw me the electrical fault light in the cluster.

As you say Injectors can get clogged too.
 
B

Bowser

  172 Ph2
Did the filter help?

Vaughan - are you saying the speed sensor could cause the surging AND the speedo wobble?
I've got exactly the same hesitation at very light throttle, in fact you explained it really well.
Much more noticeable in 4th and 5th, and considering how little throttle i've applied, the engine isn't exactly under load.
I've also just failed my MOT for idle emissions, despite changing both Lambas (NTK)
And have a parasitic drain of 0.20a.

With any luck they'll all be related.
Either way, its going well..
 
Last edited:
V

Vaughan

  Clio RS 172 2002
If you haven’t done this already, pull out the plugs and take a look at them.

A few weeks ago I had an inspiration to degrease the engine. Next day (on a forum drive) the car ran really badly with a strong misfire. It was raining so I put it down to that. It got worse over the next 3 days. I pulled the plugs and they were rusty from water getting to them from my degrease. I put in some spare plugs and swapped to a spare set of leads and it was fine.

Most problems are:
Plugs
Injectors
Leads
Injectors
Coil pack
Injectors
Fuel filter
Injectors

I have injectors multiple times because there are lots of threads here where people say “yeah checked the injectors they are good” only to find a bad injector later after everything else gets changed.
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
So, haven't had any cut outs lately, just horrid idle where if i touch the pedal it stalls.

I still feel the slight hesitation but what I have noted is that it is an part pedal only. WOT there is no hint of it.

If I were to do an RSTuner live capture of data (all values) and replicate the part throttle hesitation, do you think any of you might be able to spot anything before I start launching parts at it?

I am trying to get a running order of parts to buy, dictated by the likelihood of being the culprit and also cost. So was going as follows

1.) Coil pack - anyone used the cheaper brands from ECP (HAAS etc) ? I take it Bremi is the OEM stuff
2. ) Plugs - although, these were changed not so long ago and dont think they fixed it. Service coming up anyway
3.) Injectors - these don't seem to be to scary price wise but still over 100 from foreign climbs
4.) Plug leads - again, mine look grand but you never know

Another thought I had given the intermittency, was......could this be a dodgy earth somewhere?

Given how the car doesn't seem to actually go off a cylinder............it just feels more like it is holding back
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
I would generally agree bud but the recent ECP codes have brought some of the brands such as Bremi down to like 35 and so on. Think the Reno stuff is nearer the hundred mark isnt it.

I hear what you are saying though. I do like to put genuine in where possible but I am almost treating this as a debugging exercise.

if i put in a 30 quid coil and it fixed it, i would be happy but would be replacing it with a genuine item at the soonest opportunity

However, if it didnt, a 30 spend wouldn't annoy me as much as 100 or so.

Yes, we are edging towards throwing parts at the car to see what works which sucks :(
 
B

bloke

  dan's cast offs.
Valeo is about £45 off the top of my head. Are you still running the old type crank sensor?
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
I am buddy. I did pull it and clean it for what that is worth but it is the black one
 
B

bloke

  dan's cast offs.
Yeah, can be a bit of a pain bit it's the connections on the plug not the sensor itself.
 
jinjur

jinjur

  2003 Clio 172
It didn't...........tits magee.

Will pull it tonight anyway and see if i can jiggery pokerey it on

J
 
B

bloke

  dan's cast offs.
You could probably make the old plug fit the new sensor but that would be pointless as it will be the plug that's causing any problems.
 
B

bloke

  dan's cast offs.
the tags that hold the terminals in weaken and then the terminals pull back.

reno have used a few makes for oe, think valeo were last to do them?
 
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