Hello and Help (1 Viewer)

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Joined
Jun 17, 2020
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Location
Fingerlakes Region NY
Hello everyone. I started my account about 2 weeks ago when I bought a 1997 FJ80. Drove it home today. It's in decent shape for an upstate NY vehicle... some rust so some light bodywork is in my near-future. 157k miles on it and when I test drove it, it ran extremely well... no issues or flags, everything works, so I bought it. Almost 3 weeks later, able to pick the vehicle up (DMV has been by mail to transfer plates and registration in NY due to COVID).

The drive home was about 80 miles. Roughly 10 miles into it, the vehicle started bucking a little and not allowing smooth transitions in speed. Each time I let up on the gas and got back on it, it would buck a little. Another 10 miles up the road and the bucking was more pronounced and it stalled the first time. I had to feather the gas at every slow-down or stop to keep it running all the way home. It would not idle. No warning lights, all operating metrics on dash were normal. Stalled it about 4 times on the whole trip but would have stalled 20 or more if it were not for transitioning into neutral and feathering the gas to keep it running.

A little frustrated, we decided to go in and have lunch when we reached home. No more than 5 minutes later I took a peak at it in the driveway and there it sat. About 20-30 minutes later after eating lunch, I went out to look at the vehicle in my driveway scratching my head to look down to see a fairly large "leak-stain" coming from directly under the front bumper on the driver's side. It was that far forward... under the bumper and forward past the bumper. It seemed to be an oily gas mixture not actively leaking... and I can not tell where it came from when I get under the vehicle... It looked almost more like pressure was relieve and enough fluid was let off... no puddle, more like a blast-stain or something like that.

Any ideas?

Thanks everyone, and as I get more experience with this vehicle I hope to return to share thoughts and assistance where I can.
 
Driver side forward as you indicated could be power steering lines, pump, or reservoir. You also have the transmission lines which are routed to, and through, the radiator in that area. But, I don't think they would cause the conditions you provided. That said, did the engine get hot? If an internal failure of the lines in the radiator occurred, you may have pumped water into the trans and trans fluid into the radiator which may have caused it to overheat.

Is the check engine light on? Throwing codes and if so, which ones?

Not much help, some of the other experts should be able to assist thought.
 
Is the fluid red? If so it's PS or Tranny. I'd start it up & let it idle me a bit and look under there and look to see if it's peeing somewhere under pressure. Then run the steering lock to lock and check again. Then shut it off and and watch and see if anything lets off pressure after a bit. Good old scientific method experimentation.

As far as stumbling, the first thing I'd look at would be dizzy & fuel filter. I would also check the oil for coolant and the coolant for oil just because of the proclivity of these things to eat their own head gaskets.

Have you looked at the air filter? Is there a large dead rodent in there? Could be a MAF issue as well? Others on here should be to help there. I prefer diesels. lol.
 
I think you have 2 problems going on. The leak is unlikely to be causing the stalling.
I would suggest you check the air intake tube for cracks. They can be hard to spot but if you have one then unmetered air is making it into manifold which can cause your stalling.
For the leak, you need to try and see where the source is. Power steering, AC dryer and transmission pipes are all down in that area.
 
It seemed to be an oily gas mixture not actively leaking...
It would really help if you were to qualify your "oily gas mixture" statement. Was there gasoline leaking, or was it just some type of oil leaking (like power steering fluid, or Automatic transmission fluid coming from their cooler lines), or was it both oil, and gas leaking?
 
Driver side forward as you indicated could be power steering lines, pump, or reservoir. You also have the transmission lines which are routed to, and through, the radiator in that area. But, I don't think they would cause the conditions you provided. That said, did the engine get hot? If an internal failure of the lines in the radiator occurred, you may have pumped water into the trans and trans fluid into the radiator which may have caused it to overheat.

Is the check engine light on? Throwing codes and if so, which ones?

Not much help, some of the other experts should be able to assist thought.
 
Thanks Azca,

no check engine light, I will check tomorrow to see if there are any codes and the temp gauge stayed in the normal operating range I did not seem to get hot at all.

I will double check transmission fluid levels as well as coolant levels to. Thank you for your thoughts!
 

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