Several days ago I bought a 1992 Mitsubishi Mirage. It's exactly the same car with the same size engine as my 1991 Dodge Colt so I know how it's supposed to perform. The Mirage lacks power when accelerating suddenly, like from a dead stop into traffic (dangerous) and also from 55 to a faster speed on the freeway. I just had a full tune up thinking this might be the problem and but it didn't help.
The compression was checked & it's fine. The car sat for months (& who knows how many) before I bought it, so I bet the injectors were REALLY gummed up. I've pretty much fixed the problem by running mostly Premium gas in it & also 3 tank loads of fuel injector cleaner in the tank. It runs MUCH, much better now! But I've found that if I accidentally turn on the air-conditioner, the car's power REALLY screws up even worse than before the fuel cleaner. So lets hope I never need to use the air conditioner!
But now my REAL problem is I'm going to need a head gasket because I can see oil leaking out of the sde of the bottom of the motor in the seal area. I had a mechanic check it & he said it's a leaky head gasket. <YIKES! $$$$ might as well buy another car!!!> I find it strange that even though I'm going through about a quart of oil a month (by leaking) that the compression is still good... I guess that's because the rings are still okay, Huh?...
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I have a 2003 Mitsubishi Outlander AWD. All has been going well lately. Yesterday the "service" light came on. There are no issues when driving. This morning when I turned the car on, it was a little rough on the idle. Then when I put the car into drive, there was nothing at the acceleration.
I mean when I put the gas pedal down to the floor, I slowly started to accelerate. The car sounds a little weird as in sputtering, but not what I think is running on less than 4 cylinders. Any ideas?From bimmerforums.com:
It could be many things, including camshaft sensors, Oxygen sensors, vanos seals,fuel issues, adjuster unit, ICV, coils, sparkplugs and vacuum leaks.
