Well here's the deal. My car is a 1992 Mitsubishi Mirage and it has a 1.5L 12 valve engine. The car has NO power. It revs REAL slowly and takes forever to even get up to 3000 RPM. It runs great at idle with no miss or knock or anything even cluing that there is a problem. I mean even when you rev the car it doesn't miss or anything. It's really wierd. At first I figured it was a head gasket, but there is antifreeze in the rad, and the oil doesn't have any antifreeze in it. It didn't start to smoke out of the exhaust until I put too much oil in it and now it smokes and there is oil all over my belts. Do you think it MIGHT still be a head gasket for some reason? I checked all of my electrical connections, my vacuum lines, my fluids, and I'm totally stumped. Would a blown head gasket possibly cause this? It wouldn't make much sense to me seeing as how the engine only has 70,000 miles on it. But then again, I've seen alot of things on this car fail prematurely (like the fact that it's on it's third tranny). Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Cat could be clogged.

 

Any other suggestions? Do you think that would set off a check engine light? I don't currently have one lit.

 

my friends s10 had the same problem and there was no CEL so take off the cat and take a look to see if it is clogged.

he punched his out and then replaced it when it was smog time.

 

Cool. I'll take a look at that soon. It really sucks because the only other car I have that is inspected and legal for the road right now is my GMC Jimmy. Anybody that owns a Blazer or Jimmy can side with me on how horrible the 4.3 Vortec's gas mileage is. Especially when you drive over 100 miles a day. This Colt is a 1.5 on a 4 speed manual and it gets 36 MPG on average. It's also been modded some so it's pretty fast. It's a Plymouth Colt but it's the same thing as a Mitsubishi Mirage hatch. Roughly the same size as a Civic hatch. Thanks for the suggestions on that though. It's definately a possibility. I have a Magnaflow cat here waiting to be put on something. I bought it for my CRX to pass emissions but I want to sell the Colt to a friend of mine so I might have to sacrifice it.

 

By the way man, I removed the O2 sensor so the engine could breathe a little better and to see if it would force air out of there instead of hitting the clogged cat and it revved exactly the same but louder...lol I'm stumped. I'm talking to some people that sold me parts for the motor and he thinks I should run a compression test. Duh... Anyway, if the motor's blown, the scrap heap is a callin!

 

the o2 sensor hole wouldn't fix a clogged cat. too small.

you should address the oil all over the belts problem first. you say it never had the problem until you put in too much oil?

oh, and btw, not that you need to hear this now, but stay away from mitsubishis in the future.