We were going west on I-90 east of Erie pa. when it started making a flapping noise if your asked for more power. Limped home to Ohio. The noise stopped if you let of the gas. We drove it locally a few days no problem. My wife was going to work when died and all kinds of lights lite up. When we went to tow it home, I decided to try it, yeah it ran. Went 5 miles and then coasted into the driveway. I finally got it to the dealer and when the bill went over $800 we decided 270,000 miles plus was enough. Now I am going to take it home and play with it, maybe. Anyone need what was a great car for parts? Really wanted to get 300,000 just didn't make it.
Do you have a printout of the dealer's assessment. Might be interesting to get their take on what's wrong.
Aux battery, plugs,water leak that I never saw signs of. Throttle body carboned over. Never got the HV stuff tested. bake sending sensor, warped rotors, front wheel bearings ect. Just did the brakes a year ago. So some things I think the dealer was just being a dealer.
Basically all you need at the moment would be new spark plugs because water got into them. And then clean the throttle body. That's an easy DIY repair, or any mechanic (that's not the dealer) can do it for under $100
12v battery will cause all kinds of flaky problems. False code readings, etc. You may want to buy a Bluetooth OBDII reader and dowload the Torque app to your Android phone/tablet. Then you can read the codes yourself and see what is really going on. Cost you less then $30 Seriously. Just get a good solid 12v to the car and see how the rest checks out. For water leak, are you talking about a water leak back by the 12v battery? That is a common problem that is easily remedied.
I gotta go for awhile. I'll check back in later. Water leak is at the water pump. I was thinking of changing plugs and is the 12v any thing special?
If you can change the spark plugs yourself, you can change the water pump in a 2004. It's a very basic repair, same amount of wrenching as changing spark plugs.
12v is kind of special. $200 or so? But for a temporary setup you could hack together a something if you just want to have it work for testing. The age old "water pump leak" is sometimes not reality. There is normally some weeping at the pump, but I've seen not-so-reputable mechanics use it as a scare tactic to get the customer to change it.
