Help, Loss of power II

[V10 ACR]

OK, now I don't know what to do. The dealer calls and says they figured it out and that it must be bad gas. They said I could pick the car up and that I should put "some of that engine cleaner stuff" in the gas and drive the car till it goes away. Does this make sense to anybody? There is no check engine light, so it is not likely the cam sensor (or can the sensor go bad and not throw a light?) and the fuel pressue checks out ok. I still suspect the cats are somehow clogged are causing back pressure when under load. How should they confirm that the cats are not fouled? Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[PRVT JET]

I didn't read the other post, did you try reseting the computer? do you have a vec1?

 

[Ulysses]

If it truly is bad gas, I would drain the whole thng. Usually I'ld say change the fuel filter too, but that ain't easy on ur year cars. Why the heck they put the filter where it is I'll never know.

A sure fire way to see if it's the cats is to get a hold of someone else's old cats that might be lying around in someone's garage. Don't know how you would check otherwise.

I suppose you could feel the back pressure from someone else's car with a setup like yours, but you would only be able to do that under no load.

 

[Tom F&L GoR]

It's not likely fouled injectors. They never plug up equally and the diagnostics would pick up an engine vibration caused by the worst injector. There's no reason "bad gas" would do what you've described.

Modern cats are honeycomb construction and rarely collapse. (Unlike the beads of years ago.) They loose efficiency, but usually don't change backpressure.

Are there no diagnostic codes at all?

 

[Kiaser]

Take the cats off for a day to factor that out of the equation

My friend had this problem once, but it would hardly apply to your issue. Anytime he throttled heavily, the fuel line would clamp shut. He had to have some heavy duty fuel line installed. Again, I can almost guarantee this isn't your problem, but had the same symptoms.

It almost sounds like you are either running too rich or lean on either extreme. Do you have an overwhelming smell of gas (more than usual anyhow)? Does the engine seem to be running hotter at various times (you might have to try various speeds for a length of time to tell a difference).

 

[V10 ACR]

I agree, I can't see how the gas would only be bad over 4000 RPM under load. There is something restricting the fuel burning process. It is either a physical constraint and the only choke point is the cats, or it a problem with a sensor malfunction sending bad data to the computer causing the problem. I will have them drain and refill the gas so they can prove to me that the gas is the culprit.
If that dosen't work, I'll pull the cats myself and see how it runs without them for a day or two. I don't have a VecI, so I can't play with A/F. There are no codes at all when they hook it up to their computers. Thanks guys.

 

[99 R/T 10]

Did they change the fuel filter while they had it up in the air. If they think the gas was bad, it would be common sense to change it out. Contaminated fuel or bad gas will toast the filter.

 

[fastfang]

I had a similar problem to yours. The problem was intermitten and the car was backfiring. It got so bad that the car died on me and wouldn't start. After the car cooled down, everything was fine. I took it to the dealer and they replaced the fuel pump. Still had the problem. They said that it could be the fuel pump relay because it was pretty hot when it acted up on them. I still have the same relay in and had no problem since I've replaced the battery. So check the battery, maybe that is your problem.

 

[joe117]

I'm guessing that the warranty is paying for the fix.

If that is true, do not buy into the bad gas theory any further than to tell them that it's ok for them to fix that problem if that's what they think it is.

Tell them you don't want to put any cleaner in it and that you don't want to drive it until it runs properly.

They are not being honest with you. They probably don't want to work on your car. You are probably going to have to find some other dealer.

 

[V10 ACR]

Man, now it gets worse. I call lthe dealer and tell him to drain it and refill if that will cure the problem. He calls back and says it will take 15 hr and cost 1275.00 since they will have to remove the tank to clean it?!?. So I told them if just driving it and adding additive would fix it (as I was told yesterday) why do they now have to remove the entire tank? Bottom line is they have agreed to pump out the gas, refill with premium gas (thats whats in there now anyway) and maybe add an additive. It should be done sometime today. Any bets that its not fixed?

 

[Russ M]

OK, now I don't know what to do. The dealer calls and says they figured it out and that it must be bad gas. They said I could pick the car up and that I should put "some of that engine cleaner stuff" in the gas and drive the car till it goes away. Does this make sense to anybody? There is no check engine light, so it is not likely the cam sensor (or can the sensor go bad and not throw a light?) and the fuel pressue checks out ok. I still suspect the cats are somehow clogged are causing back pressure when under load. How should they confirm that the cats are not fouled? Any ideas would be appreciated.

Do your self a favor, take it to Dan Craigan or someone who knows vipers as he does, and just pay him to diagnose the problem.

The Dodge dealers have been loosing most of their great viper techs, I am sure they are still out there but obviously yours is not one of them.

On a side note, I have had a similar experience with my car and it was when my battery was almost dead. Perhaps it does have something to do with that? And at the same time my fuel level was fairly low, perhaps that may be a reason as well. My car has never done it again(knock on wood), but if it does DC is going to be telling me what it is.

 

[Ulysses]

V10 ACR,

For 1275 they better be damn sure it's bad gas. Have them check the battery first. Did they do a test drive with a DRB hooked up to check all the parameters like AF or Fuel trim? That should shed some light on whether you are running too rich or too lean. Sounds like the dealer is guessing.

 

[Kiaser]

I had a problem with overheating anytime I drove over 75mph on my '94 camaro a long time ago. I took it to a dealer who didn't know what to make of it. They performed a slew of minor changes and fixes that they "thought" was the problem. $1200 later, it still overheated.

Turns out that another dealer had removed my air dam underneath the car a few months back and failed to reattach it. Anytime I went over 75mph the air would skip past and not cool the radiator. I was selling the car and decided to buy another air dam and attach it because I saw it was missing. Fix the overheating problem completely. Cost = $30.

Don't make the same mistake I did. There are PLENTY of other reasons your car could be acting the way it does, bad gas is unlikely the problem due to the way you described the symptops. If they want you to invest $1200 on a hunch fix, and then expect you to be slap happy when it doesn't fix the problem and ready to cough up who knows how many thousands more on hunches, then I'd go elsewhere. Contact your local Viper Tech.

 

[joe117]

They don't want to charge you $1200. They just want you to go away.
They know that they don't have a clue what's wrong and they know they will eat the cost of any wrong guesses.

 

[ZX1100]

I'm also having some issues with my car. It's kind of similar to this and it seemed to happen after I almost ran out of gas. It wouldn't idle on it's own the next day after filling up. I had to keep gassing it to idle so it wouldn't die out. I was able to drive it but whenever I would hammer it, it would hesitate like the fuel was being cut off and then it would go without any problems. Also, the car's exhaust sounds a little different. I do have a Vec1 so I disconnected the battery overnight and the next day it would idle I also set the Vec1 back to zero. It would still hesitate on initial take off so I put in some injector cleaner. It's almost time to put in more gas so I'm hoping it will be cured with a new tank.

 

[Randy]

I may be waaay off base here, but the original problem description is missing, so let me take a blind stab at it. On first gen vipers, the plug wires go bad VERY quickly, and will result in crappy performance, rough idling, and the engine cutting out at medium and higher rpm. I just got into the habit of replacing plug wires every 10-20k miles, and that always fixed it. (Of course, my viper was a daily driver, which I drove in stop-and-go traffic every day to/from work [you ought to see my leg muscles, well, at least my left leg ]), and that no-doubt helped toast plug wires, as well as not-infrequent track events.

Randy