'94 3Sfe Hesitation

May 12, 2010

Hi, I have the 2 litre 3sfe Carina E

I have a problem when I accelerate at low revs (a range of between 1300 to 1600rpm) the engine hesitates badly, and its getting worse, have had a few scary moments with no power pulling out of an intersection! At high revs or any other revs for that matter it runs fine.

Anyhow, what should I be looking at to go about fixing this? I've replaced the spark plugs and throttle body, with no improvement. No fault codes found doing fuel injection diagnostics test. Any suggestions much appreciated!

May 13, 2010

Hi, I don't know much but... having had an intermittent hesitation for 18 months on my 1.6 4a-fe Carina E here are some comments. Determine the difference between a hesitation and 'running off one cylinder'. As my Oxygen sensor was the indicated fault code I was fooled into thinking this was some sort of emission/fuel mix thing, only to be told after fitting a denso equivalent sensor (from www.sparkplugs.com, and yes denso do supply the originals for Toyota) that it was always running off the no1 cylinder and that 'the oxygen sensor wouldn't cause that'. If you can deternime that the engine is running off one cylinder (remove each lead in turn when the problem is there), try swopping two plugs or leads over. My mechanic found that the fault followed the no1 BLUE FUEL INJECTOR to the adjacent cyl when swopped over. I got one from a breaker for £20 - he and this forum (elsewhere) say the blue ones give the trouble. Their plastic tops are blue where the grey elec connectors attach.

hope this helps, Maurice

Hi, I have the 2 litre 3sfe Carina E
I have a problem when I accelerate at low revs (a range of between 1300 to 1600rpm) the engine hesitates badly, and its getting worse, have had a few scary moments with no power pulling out of an intersection! At high revs or any other revs for that matter it runs fine.
Anyhow, what should I be looking at to go about fixing this? I've replaced the spark plugs and throttle body, with no improvement. No fault codes found doing fuel injection diagnostics test. Any suggestions much appreciated!