If you hear hissing sounds coming from your engine all the time, it’s possible that one of your vacuum hoses is leaking. You may also hear suction that sounds just like your vacuum cleaner. This is not the only sign that your automobile has a vacuum leak. Tri Valley Auto Repair & Diesel lists the other vacuum leak symptoms below. Don’t panic, we can find the vacuum hose that is leaking and replace it.
Acceleration Problems
When your engine has a vacuum leak, the vacuum pressure leaking out of the hose adds more air to the engine that is routed to the combustion chamber. What happens next is you end up with too much air in the combustion chamber and not enough fuel. Consequently, your acceleration will lag when you press down on the accelerator. This is because your engine is struggling because it doesn’t have enough fuel to burn.
Engine Performance Issues
This will also cause engine performance issues. You may notice that your engine idles roughly when you are sitting at a stoplight or stop sign. Other engine performance issues include the engine hiccupping, sputtering, and stuttering. It may feel as if your engine is going to stall or, in severe vacuum leak cases, your engine might actually stall.
Sporadic RPMs
Another thing to watch for is sporadic RPMs. If the vacuum leak is coming out of the hose in spurts, the needle on your tachometer will bounce up and down. You’ll also, again, feel your vehicle idling roughly. The air blowing out of the vacuum hose could also be blowing out of it smoothly, and this will cause consistently high RPMs. Take a look at what your tachometer is doing if you suspect your vehicle has a vacuum leak.
Check Engine Warning
Finally, all of these things will cause various systems in your automobile to send error codes to the engine control module. This module is your vehicle’s main computer. Once it receives an error code, it will turn on the check engine light to let you know that there is a problem with the engine. It’s important not to ignore the check engine warning. Studies have shown that the check engine light is quite accurate in warning drivers that their engines are experiencing troubles.
Tri Valley Auto Repair & Diesel in Limon, CO, would be happy to locate where your vacuum leak is in the engine and fix it. Even if the problem isn’t a vacuum leak, we can diagnose what it is and repair it.
