# Help? My KA24DE S13 is dead!



## Guest (Dec 14, 2002)

So, I've had the car for a week and haven't pushed it beyond 45mph or so. It's had a persistent engine rattle for a while, about 3 months according to the old owner, that starts around 2000 RPM and gets louder - but is absent at idle. It has a tendency to drop to extremely low RPM's when idling after warming up - drops to 200 or so, shudders and comes back up - almost all the time.

Anyways, I was driving it around 65mph on the interstate, and i noticed uphill power going above 2400 rpm or so. I was keeping it about 25-2600 to stay at about 68-70mph. Right over the crest of a big uphill, it died - I restarted it, it shuddered a bunch and died again.

After I stopped, i tried starting it. Starting made the engine shake back and forth crazily, and wouldn't catch unless i gave it a bunch of gas. It would rev roughly and stay alive as long as i kept it about 1/2 throttle (only did this for about 5 sec). Any ideas? Would timing chain problems seem to be the culprit? Blown or broken lifter?

I'm towing it tomorrow to a shop  and want to get it fixed asap.


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## Lusty240SX (Dec 9, 2002)

Sounds like a bad timing chain to me... the rattle could have been the (stretcded) chain slapping against the guides, and that would also be why your power was down... loose chain=shitty timing. Sounds almost exactly like what happened to my truck...

Hope the guides didn't take out your oil pump and fry your engine... that's what happened to my last truck...

Lifters would be making a bad "tick" sound, not a rattle.

Could be a relatively cheap fix... or you might need an engine rebuild... I hope it's just the timing chain... sucks to have this bad of luck with a car so soon...

Didn't you get your mechanic to do a Pre Purchase Inspection on it? If he did, b!tch him out for it, get really noisy, see if you can get a big discount on the work... that's something that should have shown on the test drive... of course, if you didn't, you could be stuck for the entire bill...


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