On cold days, especially after we had this major snow storm, my max eats up a lot of gas, and peformance has gone down significantly. Anytime I accelerate it feels like the timing is off, and there is a grinding noise which stops after the you pick up some speed, power doesn't flow evenly.

Has anybody experienced this or anything similar before? Please advice, if the problem is with my coils, where can I get the best deals on them? Thanks for any feedback.

 

Heh, you sure that's not stuck brakes...?
(especially the grinding noise...)
Mine's been plagued with stuck rear brake problems (parking brake sticking), which has trashed my fuel economy as well... read my other thread on this matter (Stuck Parking Brake & Rear Brake Thread)

 

having the exact same problem..minus the grinding noise.....i think it may be the coils.. I myself have to find some new ones

 

I had power loss and mpg was down turned out to be a quietly dying MAF.

MAF is $100, coils are $300+ so I would do a little more research on the problem before you start laying down the cash. I was going to do coils first but then read on here there are usually some codes that get thrown when coils start acting up.

00' SE Auto 62K

 

Thanks I'll do a little more research.

 

bad coil usually causes mis-fire/pinging. did you hear any pinging? is your check engine light on and blinking?

 

U mean gas right?

 

I meant coil missing a "c".

thx

 

No, my check engine light is not on.

 

I have never heard pinging. What does it sound like? I noticed a small kind of sound today under decent acceleration at about 3700 rpm. The best way I would describe it is it was half way between a click and a rattle. A clickish rattle. Is that pinging?

 

Bad coils sound like a metallic click..Mine were only acting up when its moist outside, otherwise they performed flawlessly.

Autozone carries cheaper coils. you should check them out before going to the dealer

 

Are they of the same quality as the dealer's coils? I hate to think of buying any parts for my Max from AutoZone.

 

Yeah, that would be it I think, unless there is some kind of variable intake thing goin on there. I doubt it though. Could there be any other cause for a noise like that from the engine bay under hard acceleration?

 

From what I've heard they are manu'd by the same company. So yeah, I'd guess they would be the same quality, not to say the original ones were that high in quality though.

 

How do you know exactly which coil is bad? I had them put it on the scanner and it threw the code saying that it was an ignition problem, but not the exact coil. I am going to go get one this week and try to fix it. If I follow the changing spark plugs directions in the FAQ section, that is essentially one step past changing the coils, right? Thanks!

 

There are six seperate plugs, one for each coil. Unplug each one of them one at a time, hit the open road and see if you can feel a loss in performance. The one that is malfunctioning is the one that is pulled and there is no difference in performance.

 

Heh, is that really safe? Plus, it it's failing intermittently doing this won't tell you much.

 

where is everyone getting these $88 MAF's from i think i neeed a new one

 

I have a bumper to bumper warranty on my car and was wondering if the coils are covered if they go bad?

 

It should be covered under the powertrain warrenty. The experiment won't hurt long term durability.