DO I NEED AN ENGINE?
As vehicles and their engines age, there are a number of symptoms that may take place. Some are less serious than others, but they can be tough to distinguish for the novice driver. Here are some guidelines to help you discern major problems from minor ones, and to help your determine whether or not your need to replace your car engine.
Smoke is bad.
If you see smoke coming from your engine or exhaust pipes, then you need to get the car checked out and you should probably be prepared for bad news. This is often a sign of a blown head gasket, which is an expensive repair and may lead to a new engine all together. Whether the engine is smoking directly through the hood of the car or out the tailpipe, it’s bad news. You should still differentiate, as it may help the mechanic diagnose the problem, but the difference doesn’t make it much less important to get it checked out.
Jerking is bad.
If your vehicle is jerking around when you begin to accelerate, that is a sign that you are having some major problems either in the engine, the transmission or the electronics. It could be something to do with the timing of the vehicle being off as a result of an electrical problem that is impacting the firing order of the cylinders, or it could be that one is not firing properly and that is throwing the timing off. It could also mean transmission problems, and if your car is jerking all over the place, chances are that it is not something minor that is causing it.
Stalling is bad.
If your car is frequently stalling out, that is obviously a bad sign as well, though you will want to keep an eye on when it happens and see if you can find any common themes. For example, some cars are more likely to stall out in the rain because they are susceptible to certain electrical problems that can rear their ugly heads when the rain picks up and wires are exposed to water.
Obviously you do not want to get stuck in a situation where you cannot restart your vehicle and are stuck, but if it keeps restarting then you may be able to get away with driving it for a little while longer while you try to diagnose the problem. On the other hand, if your stalling is combined with another symptom, you may not want to waste a single moment before getting it checked out.
General Approach
Those are a few examples, but there are obviously a number of symptoms that can pop up in a vehicle. As a good rule of thumb, if you cannot figure out where a noise, vibration or other disturbance is coming from, you should get it checked out by a mechanic. It’s usually better in the long run to spend a little bit of money checking out a problem to try to catch it early than to wait until it is serious enough to become a major repair or require a replacement engin
