My Girlfriends Ka is doing the same...
It's really annoying! I have found faults with everything I have tried that has made the problem slightly better but, alas, no cure yet. I'm not a mechanic, but I don't mind giving things ago as I work in a skilled trade.
We bought the car and was very happy with our purchase for the first few days. After a week our so, the car began to run lump and cut out at any sign of pressing the clutch. The fuel consumption was amazingly high too (about 15mpg)!
I will detail the fault finding path I have used so far to see if it can help someone else.
1) I assumed that the car could do with 'a good service, that.ll fix it'. I will never forget those ill chosen words I said to my girlfriend as I reassured her that getting the bus to work on Monday was not necessary. During the service I found a quantity of engine oil in the air filter box and the air filter itself. As the car had just been purchased, I put it down to bad servicing and cleaned all the air pipes. When I was doing this I found that one of the camshaft ventilation pipes had collapsed. I'm telling you this because it was the pipe that comes out the oil filler cap and touches the rocker cover. It looks like this could be a common fault due to the hot surfaces involved. I also did the normal sparks, leads, air filter type stuff as part of the service.
I'm telling you this because I didn't have the part to replace the damaged pipe straight away so the car was used for a couple of days with the damaged pipe. Since I unblocked all the other pipes, the car now ran normally until you pressed the clutch. When you pressed the clutch the engine ran at full revs for a couple of seconds... How embarrassing?
2) With new camshaft ventilation pipe in hand (four pipes, in a cross shape, £18 from ford) I headed out to the car and replaced the damaged part. I took 2 whole minutes out of my day (I also changed the oil filler cap as it contains a rough filter and the old one looked blocked).
How delighted I was when the car started first time. I rubbed my hands together with glee as I climbed inside, ready to hit the road for a test drive. No revving? No stalling? Yes! I fixed it! How I gloated to the misses when I told of her the story of my fine fault finding skills!
Until the next day when she took the car to work. It stalled at all of the lights. Gutted... It did fix the incredibly high fuel consumption though.
3) The next thing I tried was to clean out the idle control valve. The car felt better straight away but still stalls. I order a second hand one from ebay on a punt. I also ordered a brand new lamdba sensor (£22 - ebay) and fuel filter (£9 - Halfords).
4) My parts have arrived! Woohoo! I decided that fitting them one at a time with a little test drive in between to see what part would be the definitive cure. I started with the idle control valve. The part I got from ebay doesn't fit. It had the wrong connector. Lesson learnt - I've just ordered a brand new one (£18 - ebay, talk to the trader if you're not sure). I then changed the lambda sensor. This made a big difference to how the car performs but it did not fix the stalling problem. Fuel consumption is yet to be seen but should improve further. I changed the fuel filter (incidentally, the fuel filter was a nightmare as it was the original part). Seems to run better but still stalls.
I'm never buying a 'second hand bargain' again!
I will repost when I have the problem fixed!
All of the work I have carried out can be carried out by anyone with a simple knowledge of spanners and the like. You just need some simple tools and a workshop manual.
Ta!
andybantam
July 2010
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