My Elantra died last week. It just quit running and now won't start. Unfortunately it died 30 miles north of town and I had to pay $106 to have it towed back home.
Having one car die isn't so bad when you have two cars right? Wrong, the other car was already not running so I now had no car to drive. Good thing I had my Trek mountain bike (which I got for free by the way) so a least I could ride that to work (and to the auto parts store).
So since I had no idea what was wrong with the Elantra, it sounds really bad when you try to start it, I decided to fix the Sonata. The Sonata needed new plugs and wires badly, it ran so rough and poorly that is was undriveable. I had put off changing the plugs because it is a V6 with the air intake manifold covering the back plugs. The owners manual states changing the plugs is a job for someone more qualified than me, like a trained mechanic.
Well the front 3 plugs are easy to get to so I figured why not change those and see how it runs. So I rode my bike to the auto parts store and bought 3 plugs. The third plug I took out had a toasted wire so I was off on the bike again to get a set of wires. When I finished, it ran a little rough but a least it was drivable. That was on a Wednesday. I figured the back 3 could wait for the weekend.
On Thursday my son borrowed the car to go to work on the other side of town. On his way back he called to tell me he couldn't get the car go any faster than 5 mph. Great, did I screw something up? Should I have changed the back 3 also before driving it? It was undriveable again. On Friday I rode my bike back to the auto parts store to buy the other 3 plugs for my upcoming task on Saturday.
Saturday morning I starting in on removing the manifold. It took me over 2 hours to get everything disconnected and unbolted so I could remove it. I took my time because I wanted to make sure I didn't break anything or remove something I shouldn't. Plus some of the bolts it the back were really hard to get to.
After lunch I started in on changing the 3 plugs. The wire on the middle plug was not only toasted but a large part of the boot broke off around the plug when I tried to remove it. Now I couldn't remove the plug until I could get that piece of rubber out from around the plug. After working at it with various screwdrivers and pieces of wire for a long while with no success I was off on the bike again to see if the auto parts store had a solution.
The guy at the store couldn't come up with anything although he said it was a common problem. I was about to leave when he remembered they had a set of tools similar to dental tools with hooks on them. I bought a set for about $10 and headed back home.
The hooks did the trick, and after about a half hour of working at it, the plug was free. I finished changing all 3 plugs then spent another hour putting the manifold back on. Now for the test to see how the car ran. It started fine and sounded great but when I drove it, it still wouldn't do much more than 5 mph. Well I'm just going to have to get someone else to check it out and find out what's wrong.
The next Wednesday I took it to the Hyundai dealer. I didn't want to go there since they are such a rip off shop but it's close (especially good when you can only drive 5 mph) and I figured they would have all the right equipment to find out what's wrong.
It turns out a part of the catalytic convertor had broke off and was blocking the exhaust. This was why the car had no power. I expected their estimate for fixing it would be high but I was shocked when the guy said $2600! I think he realized their price was ridiculous since he sounded a little guilty and said I should think out getting an estimate from Midas.
Of course I wasn't going to pay $2600 to fix a small part of the exhaust so I paid the $90 diagnosis fee and picked up the car. I fully expected to be driving back home at 5 mph but it ran like normal. I could accelerate and even drive on the interstate again. I guess they unblocked the exhaust while they were checking it out.
