rev up your engines, okay today I got this cute little Pontiac Solstice the
customer brought it over it's driving weird it's kind of herky-jerky so I'm
going to show you how you can diagnose and fix though many things can do that
all we start with the basics first check the engine oil and filter if that's low
with these complex turbocharged engines variable valve timing loss of oil
pressure can make them do that so first check the oil
wipe it off stick it back in let's see it's pulling it's relatively clean not
really been low or really dirty that can mess up the variable valve timing and
make it go squirrelly hesitate but that's not the case now we're gonna
check the coolant to see if that's low this one is really simple well it's on
the halfway mark here so that's fine yeah we'll check the air filter now it's
relatively clean it's not all that bad when I put it off to the sun you can
see the light shining through so it's not clogged now since this is a
turbocharged car if there's any kind of air leaks that can really mess with the
turbocharger so we'll check for loose or cracked vacuum lines and look all over the
place it could be a loose line anywhere and take the stupid covers off too
since it blocks stuff and look all around for any kind of cracked hoses loose fittings so next
we'll pull out a spark plug and we'll take the ignition coil off and see what it
looks like we'll just take the 10mm bolt off the ignition spark plug
coil and take out spark plug these are aluminum so I'll do it on cold engine
you don't want to do it on a hot engine or you might end up cross threading on
the aluminum and here's a spark plug, now it's not particularly worn it's a little
bit black now the top isn't but the inside is now I found for my own
experience working on these four cylinder 2-liter turbos that gm makes, that's
relatively normal as the age you know this thing is 13 years old and they do
tend to run a little bit rich that's pretty typical for these things this
isn't worn out it's not particularly bad but it is running a little bit rich
I'll put the spark plug back in put the ignition coil back on now we're gonna
warm up and put a scan tool on it, so I'll plug the scan tool in then we'll check
to see what its side we're gonna be looking at the entire data list to see
if there's any anomalies the first thing to check is the maf sensor, the grams per second
should be close to the engine side in this case it's only one point two two
grams per second it should be 2.0 because that's the size of the engine
and now I'm gonna rev up the engine to see what happens as you can see it's
hardly changing at all it should be going much higher because we're sucking
more air in the engine now it could be wiring a computer and stuff but the MAF
sensor is right here and it's very easy to change so we're just got it another
one that put it in and then check it with the data stream just on plug it
squeeze it pull it out and take the two screws out one and two I has a new one
you see it shape the same and I always put them in the same way in this case
this was facing forward so you make that face forward when you put it in just
flops in the hole you put the two screws in one on a top to bottom careful not to
drop them because they're awful tiny and that stuff and this just snaps back on
now start it back up and now we can see when you rev the engine up you got air
flow like you're supposed to it's not staying at one point 2 it's
going up like it's supposed to so now while it's warming up and put all
this stuff back on, then close the hood and take it for a road trip and here we go
nice smooth acceleration no herky-jerky seems fixed so now you know how to
diagnose and fix a car that's accelerating herky-jerky
sometimes it's very simple if you got a little knowledge, so if you never want to
miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell