Hello everyone!
As the title implies, I have a broken car and have not been able to go to work because of it. I've only missed 3 days so far, but I'm hoping not to miss any more.
So I have a 2013 sonic, it's mercury silver so I've taken to calling it Freddie after Freddie Mercury <3 I found it through USAA at a dealer in Fredrick MD who was selling used cars. Not a good as going directly to a Chevy dealership, but my finances wouldn't allow me to do that unfortunately.
The symptoms
I'm going to start this by admitting I failed my emissions test. The codes the emissions place gave me were P0171 (lean fuel) and P0304 (misfire in cylinder 4). I was still able to drive after the emissions fail, but this past friday changed that. I have had a bit of a rough idle and a rough acceleration intermittently since I bought the car, but on friday I was driving on a surface road at around 40-45ish mph, and the car began to shake/vibrate like a cheap massage chair. I continued on to my destination because it wasn't far, but even after turning my car off and back on, the shaking continued. After a few feet of trying to drive it away from my destination, the stabilitrak light came on solid and my CEL started blinking rapidly. I managed to get it home, and I googled the symptoms (which funny enough brought me here!) and my initial conclusion was a bad valve cover. I bought a new valve cover, and the socket needed to remove the old one, along with a socket wrench, and replaced the old valve cover last night. This morning I took it for a test drive around the block, and it made no difference whatsoever. What is worse is, after the test drive I opened the hood to see if I could visually identify the problem, and I found oil had sprayed out from somewhere in the area of the upper right corner of the valve cover .
In conclusion
I have no idea what is wrong with my sonic at this point, and although I have plenty of friends willing to help me install or remove whatever parts are required, I missed my last 3 shifts of work and now have very little money to pour into trying to fix my poor Freddie. I already bought one part that didn't solve the issue, so I'm hoping to be pointed in a more specific direction before I go buying any more parts that might not help. I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed that you lovely people can help me! Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
As the title implies, I have a broken car and have not been able to go to work because of it. I've only missed 3 days so far, but I'm hoping not to miss any more.
So I have a 2013 sonic, it's mercury silver so I've taken to calling it Freddie after Freddie Mercury <3 I found it through USAA at a dealer in Fredrick MD who was selling used cars. Not a good as going directly to a Chevy dealership, but my finances wouldn't allow me to do that unfortunately.
The symptoms
I'm going to start this by admitting I failed my emissions test. The codes the emissions place gave me were P0171 (lean fuel) and P0304 (misfire in cylinder 4). I was still able to drive after the emissions fail, but this past friday changed that. I have had a bit of a rough idle and a rough acceleration intermittently since I bought the car, but on friday I was driving on a surface road at around 40-45ish mph, and the car began to shake/vibrate like a cheap massage chair. I continued on to my destination because it wasn't far, but even after turning my car off and back on, the shaking continued. After a few feet of trying to drive it away from my destination, the stabilitrak light came on solid and my CEL started blinking rapidly. I managed to get it home, and I googled the symptoms (which funny enough brought me here!) and my initial conclusion was a bad valve cover. I bought a new valve cover, and the socket needed to remove the old one, along with a socket wrench, and replaced the old valve cover last night. This morning I took it for a test drive around the block, and it made no difference whatsoever. What is worse is, after the test drive I opened the hood to see if I could visually identify the problem, and I found oil had sprayed out from somewhere in the area of the upper right corner of the valve cover .
In conclusion
I have no idea what is wrong with my sonic at this point, and although I have plenty of friends willing to help me install or remove whatever parts are required, I missed my last 3 shifts of work and now have very little money to pour into trying to fix my poor Freddie. I already bought one part that didn't solve the issue, so I'm hoping to be pointed in a more specific direction before I go buying any more parts that might not help. I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed that you lovely people can help me! Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
