Shakes while driving and lacks power

Tiny
MARISOL SORIANO
  • MEMBER
  • 2004 JEEP LIBERTY
  • 3.7L
  • V6
  • 4WD
  • AUTOMATIC
  • 199,050 MILES
After getting the P0300 code we replaced all the fuel injectors, cleared the code, and it drove fine for have the day. After that the vehicle would take longer than normal to start, have a lack of power on acceleration and start to shake. My husband would disconnect the battery and reconnect it before he drives it and that seemed to work for a short time. So we replaced the camshaft and crankshaft sensors, cleared the memory and again the vehicle drove smooth for half of the day and started to do it again. Can anyone help us with this?
Wednesday, November 27th, 2019 AT 4:58 PM

4 Replies

Tiny
CARADIODOC
  • MECHANIC
  • 33,874 POSTS
You're making more problems than you're solving. First of all, forget the injectors. Chrysler buys them from Bosch in flow-matched sets, and problems with them are just about unheard of. GM just grabs a handful from a huge bin, and throws them in an engine with no regard to flow-matching. They still work fine until you reach around 100,000 miles, then their different flow rates do lead to elusive fault code P0300s that are almost impossible to diagnose, but to my knowledge, that only applies to GM vehicles. I've never replaced an injector on a Chrysler product, including working for a very nice family-owned dealership for ten years.

The two sensors you listed will not cause this problem. If either one fails, you'll have a crank / no-start condition. This doesn't apply to your engine, but these sensors on some other applications have critical air gaps. If those aren't set right, you can have intermittent problems; usually more crank / no -starts.

What you're describing is typical of worn spark plugs and wires. They commonly last 100,000 miles, but that isn't always the case. Those are what I'd be looking at first.

The next problem is you don't "reset" or solve anything by disconnecting the battery. What happens is the Engine Computer loses its memory, then it has to relearn the characteristics of all the sensors, and rebuild the "fuel trim" numbers table. That all takes place without you even noticing as soon as you start to drive, except for "minimum throttle". The computer needs to see a very specific set of conditions for that to take place before it will know when it must be in control of idle speed. Until then, the engine may not start and run unless you hold the accelerator pedal down 1/4". You won't get the nice "idle flare-up" to 1500 rpm at start-up, and it will tend to stall at stop signs. The low idle speed can also result in rough running that a lot of people try to diagnose as fuel or spark problems.

Every time you disconnect the battery, you're going to have to relearn minimum throttle. To do that, drive at highway speed with the engine warmed up, then coast for at least seven seconds without touching the pedals.

What often happens after disconnecting the battery is the next time you run the engine, the computer won't know all of the sensors' "personalities", or characteristics, so it uses factory pre-programmed values to run on until it learns that. Once it compares various sensor readings and operating conditions, it starts to use the actual sensor readings to make fuel metering calculations. Before that happens, the engine may be getting slightly too much fuel, which won't cause a noticeable running problem like too little fuel would. Once all the sensors are being used, a different problem, such as worn spark plugs, affect engine performance in ways we can observe. This is especially true when that wear causes a spark plug to be right on the edge of not being able to fire. Lean conditions, such as when coasting or cruising, make it particularly hard to ignite the fuel. That can be where the misfires occur leading to the code 300.

Related to worn spark plugs, during periods of hard acceleration, it often takes a higher voltage to fire a spark plug. Electrical current flow always looks for the easiest path to follow, and if that becomes a path that bypasses the spark plug's gap, a misfire occurs. Those are the ones we can feel as shaking and poor acceleration. Because spark plugs last about three times longer than they did a few decades ago, we see a lot more trouble now caused by the wires by the time we have to change those plugs. That's why it's good practice now to replace both the wires and the plugs at the same time.
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Wednesday, November 27th, 2019 AT 7:15 PM
Tiny
MARISOL SORIANO
  • MEMBER
  • 4 POSTS
The spark plugs and wires have been replaced and gap been checked. Still it drives okay for a little while then check engine light come on and I get the same p0300 misfire code.
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Wednesday, November 27th, 2019 AT 11:53 PM
Tiny
MARISOL SORIANO
  • MEMBER
  • 4 POSTS
Now we are getting a P0171 code.
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Thursday, November 28th, 2019 AT 2:53 AM
Tiny
CARADIODOC
  • MECHANIC
  • 33,874 POSTS
P0171 - System too Lean (Bank 1)

I think I'd go looking for the cause of that one first. If you have a spark-related misfire, the oxygen sensor will detect the unburned oxygen in the exhaust as the lean condition, but you'll smell the unburned gas at the tail pipe. If the lean condition is caused by too little fuel, that can cause the code 300, random cylinder misfires. You'll feel spark-related misfires. Fuel-related misfires often go unfelt, leading to confusion over why that code is being set, but you'll still feel them under certain conditions, typically when accelerating.

The last two things are compression and timing of spark, injector pulses, and valve opening. Those things won't be intermittent, and they won't affect just one cylinder, so no need to look at those.

A better suspect is fuel contamination, especially if the problem first showed up shortly after stopping for gas. Often that will clear up if you run the tank to near empty, then put fresh, new gas in. The last thing involves connecting a scanner so you can see what the computer is seeing and reacting to. Of particular interest is the "long-term fuel trim, (LTFT) and "short-term fuel trim, (STFT) numbers. If you see the short-term numbers are high negative, it means the computer is commanding less gas than what was programmed in at the factory, then you need to look at the other sensor readings to see why that is. If you see the numbers are high positive, the computer has seen the lean condition and is adding more fuel to the calculations in an attempt to get the mixture where it's supposed to be, but it's not having success. Low fuel pressure could cause that, but that type of fuel pump failure, and a plugged fuel filter are both very uncommon on Chrysler products. A better suspect would be a partially-plugged pick-up strainer inside the gas tank.

There's a good chance the two fault codes are related to the same problem. Solve the lean condition and hopefully that will take care of the misfire problem.
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Thursday, November 28th, 2019 AT 3:46 PM

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