E85Forum.com

liszabailey · Joined: 09 Mar 2011 Posts: 2 Location: Minden

I have a 1996 tracker that has no power under a load. You can press the pedal to the floor and it will almost cut out and die. You can back of the throttle half way and it will pick back up I have a complete geo tracker parts. I am having to gear down to third to climb hills, I usually take in fifth. This problem started yesterday after driving 20 miles after a fill up. The station does have ethanol.

It has new plugs, wires, distributor, and the timing belt was replaced about 4 months ago. I have added some gas treament to it and drove it several miles, no help. It has always had a slight hesitation when accerlerating quickly and sometimes it is hard to start when it is cold. I have to put the gas pedal to the floor to start.

It idles fine, but will bog down if the gas pedal is pressed quickly. The only code it is throwing is speed sensor malfunction and this is due to the speed sensor being unhooked. I can not find the drive gear for the transfer case. This was missing when I bought it. Any suggestions?BTW I'm using ethanol do you think that affect it?

hotrod · Joined: 19 Apr 2005 Posts: 872 Location: Colorado

Welcome to the forum!

We will try to help but you need to give us a bit more infomation.
You say you are using ethanol added gasoline. I assume you a referring to normal E10 pump fuel.
If not and you filled up with E85, that would explain your issue, as the 1996 GEO tracker is not designed to run on E85. It won't damage your engine if you made an accidental refill with E85, all you need to do if that is the case is top off the tank with normal gasoline as soon as you can get 2-3 gallons of fuel in the tank. Then repeat that until the poor performance goes away. It will take 10 or more gallons of gasoline to dilute the E85 to a low enough concentration that normal driving behavior will return.

If you are talking about normal E10 gasoline, how long have you been using this fuel?
Was this fuel fill up that was just before the problem your first ever fill up with E10 gasoline?

Was this a station you have never filled up at before?
Did you get a car wash when you filled up?
(wet engine ignition wires can cause similar behavior).

Your symptoms sound to me like the fuel mixture is leaning out (not enough fuel) at wide open throttle (WOT). One possible cause for this is a clogged fuel filter.

You also mentioned you have new plugs and wires installed about 4 months ago. Have you looked to see if one plug wire has come off? Small engines like the tracker has, will start and run under light load with one dead cylinder but cannot pull any load.

It does not happen often but new plug wires occasionally are not fully seated when they are installed. This can result in one of two types of failure. The plug wire can simply fall off at either end, (the distributor end or the spark plug end) or sometimes if it is not fully seated the connection is poor and the spark has to jump a gap between the end of the wire and the terminal it is supposed to be connected to. This will over time burn up the end of the wire.

Have someone familiar with car engines (if you are not) check to see that all your spark plug wires are fully seated in the distributor cap and properly connected to the spark plugs.

Since the car is 15 years old, replace the fuel filter or have some one check to see you have good fuel pressure at full flow. Just replacing it on general principles would be my choice.

If you got some bad gas from a station that could also explain your issue. Was the station receiving a fuel delivery at the time you got your fuel? Fuel delivery can stir up the fuel in the ground storage tank and suspend dirt and any water in the tank for 30 minutes to a couple hours. The station could also just not be taking care of their fuel tanks.

From the description you gave and the timing if that stations fuel was the problem you most likely either need to replace the fuel filter or simply burn off the bad gasoline.

Take the car to a newer gas station that sells a lot of fuel (to be sure it is most likely clean and fresh) and top off the tank. This will sometimes help improve a tank of bad gasoline enough for symptoms to disappear or diminish enough that you can burn off the tank of fuel.

Ethanol added fuel should not cause a problem. A women I know drove a Geo Tracker here in the Denver area using E10 gasoline for years with no problems. (she wore it out - over 100,000 miles and recently traded it in for a newer car).

Hope that helps?

Larry

Alcohol · Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 634 Location: Central Wisconsin

Larry pretty much said what I would have.

Call the station and ask for the mgr- see if anyone else reported an issue. A poorly maintained fuel tank fill can allow groundwater to run in. IF this is the case then others will have experienced this also if they were filling as the transport was dumping. If they do not admit to it and your mechanic find water then call your state motor fuels inspector (sorry- I do not know in your state if it is dept of commerce, weights and measures, or ag dept. Also- if you had been filling with no alcohol fuel and got a bad batch of it- it might not show up until you fill with E10 and the new fuel tries to pick up the water and push it thru. (it might have been laying just below the fuel pickup just waiting to cause problems for you)

Be sure if it is found that water is in the fuel to have the mechanic pull a 1 quart sample from the fuel rail or tank bottom and hold it for the state inspector (shops are very bad about dumping it all into a waste tank and losing evidence that can be seen visually or quality checked vis distillation and other tests.

Now- I will tell you I run a bunch of stations and sometimes get these concerns- I ALWAYS call in the state inspector right away. He can find if I ever got a dirty or water laden load from the terminal because it will always still be in the tank bottom. We have never in 6 years actually had a fuel problem- it always ended up being the vehicle (but I am a quality fanatic).

Much more likely it is a mechanical issue. As Larry said- It is common for plug wires to not be seated fully. This happened to me a year ago on an 8 cylinder engine and it only misfired (no visible check engine light/code) enough to cause transmission shift issues at overdrive and an once in a while it would die.
After taking the thing to 4 local shops and no one could find it- I took it to a very good shop and asked that their best mechanic ride along with his factory spec'ed diagnostic tool plugged in- I went for the hills where I knew I could re-create the issue. He found the plug wire boot in 5 minutes (it had already burned the plug tip and wire) and a fuel pump that was just a little weak back at the shop as he finished diagnosis. There are a lot of sensors in cars today and any of them could have gone bad or need cleaning such as airflow sensors, O2 sensors, yada, yada. Sometimes even the PCM (computer) goes bad though rare. Sometimes fuel injectors burn out or plug.

Also as Larry mentioned - if this vehicle has an in-line fuel filter- change it if it was not done in the last 20,000 miles or so.

Misfueling is also a possibility- does this station sell E85 and could you have filled with it (look for your receipt). If so- Larry already told you what to do.

liszabailey · Joined: 09 Mar 2011 Posts: 2 Location: Minden

Alcohol · Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 634 Location: Central Wisconsin

Yes Lisza- please do let us know what they find it was- always like to know what it ended up being. One learns something new every day Cool