Hi all, Hoping someone can help me with a very strange issue I am having with my 9C1 2000 series 2 VT Commodore. I'll start from the top... About 2 weeks ago, I was cruising along at 80km/h when I heard a bang. I imediately pulled over, shut down the engine & inspected the car... after finding nothing obviously wrong, I started it up again ready to move off, consideirng perhaps I heard a blow out from another car. As soon as I managed to start it (on gas) it was running very poorly, almost losing power several times... I switched over to petrol & it improved abit, but was still dodgy. 2 days later after driving it on petrol, I took it to my mechanic who told me that it was the leads & proceded to replace the leads and re-tune the gas. After starting it again, things seemed to run much better... Then when driving along coming home yesterday (60km/h) the engine light came on and the car noticibly started to slow down, and I felt what I can only describe as resistance... After stopping and starting again, the gear changes were terrible, everytime it would change the car would shake and it seemed very bad. I stopped the car, shut it down, switched to petrol & drove off without an issue. I have been driving on petrol for the last 2 days with no problems. Can anyone offer any advice please? I am totally lost on this one! I have had the car for several years with no real problems. The transmission was last serviced as part of a major service in January.
ok lets start of with its only on lpg the problem arrises..... what uve explained is a missfire, hence the suspected transmission, this is very common in the way customers explain things to mechanics.... u say the check engine light came on when on lpg, which will normally come on when the car runs lean eg on lpg, when commanding a closed loope fuel control, this is another problem with lpg systems...... where abouts are u located, eg which state, what id personally say, is u either have a faulty 02 sensor, which is located in exhaust, or the base lpg mixture settings are wrong, or there is a possible chance there might be a vacuum leak... do u know what lpg system has been installed on car eg what brand convertor and mixer, as this will help in describinh the system u have.
Hi, thanks for the reply. I am in SA - Adelaide. The gas system appears to be branded 'Gastec' It has a small diagnostic display under the hood, but everything appears normal from the display. Strange that you should mention vacuum leak... I swear that now I can hear a sucking of air sound when accelerating more than I could before all this started. I called the mechanic on this & he checking it out and said no, it’s just normal. But I swear it’s a loud sucking noise which sounds like it is directly in front of me (driver’s side).
JD SLEKISM is spot on the money, when you get a LPG backfire it often cracks the plastic parts in the inlet tract. The inlet tract is normally a dry system (air only), when you run LPG you fill this area with flammable gas which ignites and explodes. You will need check the whole inlet system particularly after the MAF sensor up to the heads. The airbox often explodes but this wont cause your problem as this is unmetered air and will only let dirt into your engine. Andrew
Ok... I'll check that out. Anything else I should be checking? I mean why would the trans go silly and then after a quick shut down return to normal... sounds very strange.
Hmm ok... Should I be taking this to the same mechanic...? Any reccomendation for here in SA...? Or could someone give me detailed instructions on what to do? Thanks for all your help so far.
Ok thanks againg guys... Sorry to sound like a clown... but why would the gas system be causing the transmission problems? Cheers all.
The transmission takes it's readings from the engine sensors which are obviously scrambled (running lean?, low manifold pressure?). An LPG specialist will be used to this type of problem or take to Holden, either way they will charge a fortune. Andrew
i would still take it to a specialist as Holden only really know Factory Gas and not aftermarket ones as well, also you may find it cheaper to do it this way as dealers dont really like to work on older models for some reason.
I'm leaning toward holden as they can plug in tech2 and see what the engine thinks is happening and double check any other possible causes of transmission probs and when they find the fault they will have the parts to fix it, rather than pay someone to get parts and add a markup Andrew
On average id get approx 10 cars a week from the dealerships all over SA, im flatout at the moment, give me a buzz, and ill try and find an hour to have a good look over it. The factory LPG system, Holdens only ever used was a Impco system, and even then they didnt know how to adjust them correctly. Cheers brad 0422 276 940 (im in SA)
Issue Resolved Thanks for the kind offer Brad... However, I have actually resolved the issue. I took it to my local holden dealership & after some checking found it to be the 'Purge Hose' which had seperated from the engine... $60 later (which I thought was very good) - the car is back to normal. They mentioned that they fix about 3 or 4 of these a week on gas cars. Cheers.
Congrats Indy_387, good to hear it's fixed and good to see you're sharing your new found knowledge to help others. Andrew
