I have an old Mazda 323 with 202,000 miles. Two nights ago coming home on a deserted stretch of road (-15 degrees out), it lost power and started making a racket. I found a place to pull over and discovered one of the spark plugs was out. I couldn’t get it back in because I didn’t have a wrench, so I continued on home for 35 miles. In the morning I went out and put in a new plug. I have to mention that this summer when I replaced the plugs I messed up a little and screwed up the threads in the one mentioned above. I could only get it in half way. However, the car seemed to run fine and was still getting good gas mileage for over 6 months. Anyway, the car started up and was running fine for about 2 minutes and then “thunk”. Now it just whines and there is a kind of clicking noise. I know it’s time to get another car. My dilemma is that the nearest dealer is about 125 miles and I have no way to get there. I’m trying to decide if I should have my car towed and spend the money to fix it so I can get to a dealer and trade it in; I can’t rent a car because I have no way to get it back home when I buy the new car as I don’t know anyone that could make the trip with me. But if the engine is shot it’s all futile. Any ideas given the symptoms what the matter could be and if it would be expensive to fix? I made sure the plus was secured to the distributor cap by the way.
You may be able to find a rental agency that offers a shuttle service. You drop the car off and then they driver you home.
Unfortunately, it’s about 110 miles to the nearest car rental agency. There is one car dealer that rents about 45 miles from here, but he doesn’t offer pick up and delivery.
My other option is to take the bus to Bangor and get a cab to the car rental place and then go to the car dealer.
I’m hoping the dealer will deliver the car and take my old one, Which brings up another question…will they take the car off my hands? They would have to bring it up on a trailer so they could drive back. Can you get an immobile car on a car trailer? You hear dealers advertising they will take “any” trade-in. This would be an “any”.
I’m meditating…all this will be over in a week one way or another…Ohmmmmmmm Ohmmmmmm
I could very possibly be wrong about this, but I’m guessing that you can get an immobile car onto a trailer. I believe they have winches (lol, I spelled that with an e the first time 'round), so all you’d have to do is put the car in neutral and make sure the emergency break is off.
Once again I could easily be wrong, but that’s just my $.02
No need to doubt – you are exactly correct.
I’m not an auto mechanic but good try.
It’s not a good idea (I’m assuming that it is a peterol engine) to drive with one of the pistons open. Apart from the possibility of getting dirt into the chamber, there is the little matter of ejecting a mixture of peterol and air every 4th stroke.
If you have wrecked the threads for the plug, you can get the threads rebored and a shim inserted to return the whole thing to the original state but this is a bit of overkill on a 200,000 mile engine.
I think that you either need a new engine or a new car.
You could try to screw/jam a new plug into the threads but if you dislodge a bit of metal into the chamber, you could ruin the engine. However the engine has probably had it so you could try this and just drive it untill the new plug wears out (another 40K miles if you’re lucky)
You are a car salesman’s captive audience. Call the nearest dealer, see what he has and if you can afford it. Ask him to put one on a roll back and take it out to you, he can then pick up your old car.
We’ll need a more thorough description of what it’s doing to make intelligent guesses about the problem.
Whines when? Does the engine start and whine when it’s running? Does it not start but the starter cranks, and it whines when it’s cranking? Does it not crank but the starter whines?
Likewise for the clicking noise. When, exactly? Can you sense where the clicking is coming from – in the dash, in the engine compartment, in the starter, in the engine itself?
Oh, yeah – when it “thunked,” did the engine die?