engine sludge and performance
Asked by Joe Sep 19, 2009 at 05:54 PM about the 2001 Buick Century
Question type: Maintenance & Repair
I have a 2001 Buick Century as my first car given to me by my parents, and it has over 120k miles on it. Currently, I drive it about 65 miles a day 5 days a week to get to college and back. When accelerating to highway speed (say, 60mph) or while trying to accelerate to 60 from 40-50, when I push down the gas pedal, more often than not nothing happens until after I push down harder, and afterwards the engine revs at a noticeably higher rpm than before (there's no tachometer on my car, so I can't give an exact number) and I accelerate a bit faster than I originally intended. Is this because there's something clogging up the fuel system, possible engine sludge, maybe both? Or is there something else that would be wrong here? Thanks in advance.
Joe
6 Answers
sounds like the tps is bad, the tps and iac work together to control the amount of gas being sent to the motor in the proper proportions. periodically when the tps goes bad it will not throw a code because it is not quite out of range. the iac will over compensate causing the surge. have a scan done to get the tps voltage under load you should be able to see if it is in the right range.
The thing is I can accelerate normally if I do it slowly. If I try accelerating from 0 to 60 slowly and gradually, there is very little if not no surge at all. It really only happens when I'm already moving and want to speed up to 60mph
the problem is at the end of the range not the beginning, your problem sounds like a classic symptom. if you want to try the basic maintenance stuff first to see if that helps be my guest. start with a fuel filter, an oil change with Rislone or seafoam or marvel mystery or any other cleaner, then throw a can of seafoam in the gas tank to clean the injectors.
beening a mechanic, (and im late with this post) check for any codes stored in your pcm and or check for a blocked cat on your exhaust!! these get blocked on gm cars and it makes you car run slow (wont get out of its own way/have no @SS) if these are ok have your transmission checked out. make sure fluid good and red, all gears work.
Put in a new coarse air filter. You can cut one out from a re-usable air conditioning filter. The engine will be more responsive and you will get 25 mpg in the city.
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