The other night I was leaving a gas station and as I was backing out I noticed my car juddered a couple of times but not very much. After I pulled out and started accelerating I noticed a significant loss of power and juddering then the check engine light started flashing and still does. I noticed some fresh oil around the valve cover, so I changed the valve cover gasket and poured in some oil and it still judders with the flashing check engine light. I would take it to get the check engine light looked at but I don't want to risk anymore damage trying to get there unless I have to. What could be the problem?

Thanks in advance

 

Flashing CEL is not good.

However guessing at the issue is almost as bad.

Without getting the code(s) it is going to be hard to solve. I will ask, are the tune up items up to date? Was the car low on oil, I see you "added" some? Did the vc gasket solve the oil leak? Where around the vc was the "fresh oil"?

Is this a 4 or 6 cyl.

 

What engine do you have?

How many miles?

What is "juddering"?

Generally speaking, Oil loss has nothing to do with performance.

The flashing check engine light means a significant misfire.

 

Sorry, 4 cylinder F23 about 130K miles more toward 140K by juddering I mean the car is shaking and struggling to get up to speed you can tell it lost a lot of power.
I got the code checked out and it's PO300 random misfire along with a few other codes, PO301, PO302, PO303 and PO304 and P1738 for 2nd clutch transmission fluid pressure switch fail.

Should I start by changing the spark plugs and distributor?

The valve cover issue has been resolved from what I can tell I let the car warm up and didn't see any leaks the fresh oil on the timing belt front side of the valve cover, so if you were looking at it standing from the front of the car it would be the bottom right corner area.

 

Are/were the plug wires covered in oil...tube seals.

If tune up items are due then they should be done.

 

I did not see oil in or on the spark plugs and wires I only saw oil around the valve cover. Should I change the ignition coil to an MSD or just get a replacement stock coil? I upgraded an MSD coil on my old 89 accord and it was just better overall, started quicker and idled smoother.

EDIT: An MSD coil is cheaper to get than a stock replacement. Do you guys think replacing the coil, spark plugs, and wires will fix the misfire?

 

You are misfring on all cylinders. Do the car start easliy? if it does it not an ignition problem its more than likely an issue with air intake at an idle. The car is not getting enough air at an idle so you are getting a misfire across all cyilinders, if it were plug wires it would be limited to only one or two cylinders.

The idle control valve may not be opening to let air when the throttle is closed or the egr is not closing at idle leaning out the mixture so all cylinders are missing. You would be throwing away your money on a coil or wires and it would not solve your problem.

The tranny code is another probelm and not related.

 

The car starts up almost completely normally , so should I clean out my EGR valve and what else?

 

I am not saying to do that per se; what I am saying is that something is cutting off the air when the car is at ildle causing it to misfire across all four cylinders at idle. Thats what trigerring the codes. if the misifre is frequent enough the computer may cut off injectors so they dont dump too much unburned gas in the cat.

I have a Honda V6 and just had the same problem ,this weekend. There is a tiny passage way on the upper intake manifold that air passes through when the throttle is closed (at ilde). The passage becomes clogged with soot and over time it restricts air flow at idle. Dont forget the Stoheicien ratio 14.7 parts air to 1 part fuel. When there is not enough air you dont have combustion thus your misfire.

Similarly the EGR sends exhaust smoke back to intake manifold for pollution control purposes, it is closed at idle and opens as the rpms go up. It looks like a little carberator dashpot and is bolted to the intake manifold. It has a little dinky valve that looks like the valves in your cylinder head. They get all carboned up with age and dont close tightly thus allowing oxygen depleted exhaust gas into the system at idle lowering the the ratio to well 14.7 to 1 thus causing a misfire. When the throttle opens, rpms increase) it is not as much of an issue because it's normally open at high rpm.

The first question is does your car idle erratically? 300 to 800 rpm jumps?

Does the "juddering" go away at higher rpms?

If so you an EGR problem or a idle control issue. Usually a bad idle control valve will trigger a code but a clogged passageway wont.

 

It idles pretty normally but at idle the juddering is more severe, so yea the RPMs fluctuate quite a bit like a few hundred RPM jumps. Yes the juddering is much less severe as RPMs increase but there is a significant loss of power. At idle it seems like the car is struggling to stay running.