Mitsubishi GDI stalling

[Krys Kozlowski]

Ok, so here’s what we had. I hope I’m not double posting, I am having this weird deja vu feeling I wrote on this before 😉

Symptom: Mitsubishi GDI stalls when going through curves, releasing throttle, idling at the lights etc.

Solution: Twofold. First, the guy had his battery replaced by a non Mitsubishi shop. Of course, ze Germans love their Golfs and Mercs, but are lost beyond Valhalla when confronted with a simple Mitsubishi Space Runner. So, when you replace a battery on a ’98 to 2000something Mitsubishi GDI engined car, you need to reset the ECU.
After reattaching the battery clamps, turn off all electricity hawking circuits, like lights, A/C, radio, what have you, start the engine, and let the car idle for 15 minutes. Do not touch the accelerator. Then activate all of the previously disengaged electrical systems and let it idle for 5 more minutes. Done.

That helped a lot, but not quite all the way. So I checked the air filter, plugs, and so forth, not great, but ok, and found out through the marvels of the internet that a lot of late 90ies to early 2000s GDIs had problems with sticky throttle bodies. Went out and got some throttle body cleaner, took out the large air hose connecting the TB to the air filter housing, opened the TB manually, and cleaned it with the spray and a very clean piece of cloth.

Now the thing runs like a charm, so hooray for google!

Cheers

Topic

[Flemming Jacobsen]

Glad to see that it worked for you. Some of the GDI owners here had had their throttle-bodies so gunked up that regular cleaning didn’t help and they had to take it in to Mitsubishi for an expensive CarbonBlaster cleaning.

But sadly the GDI’s are a bit more maintenance-“intensive” due to the exhaust recirculation system that Mitsubishi started using.

[Krys Kozlowski]

Hey mate,

Yea, I was quite happy about that. The customer walked out after no more than 30 minutes (including the ECU reset). I like simple and clean fixes. And the guy didn’t have to pay much either so we were both happy 😉

Cheers

[Arto Kautiainen]

[quote=”kkozlowski” post=66270] So, when you replace a battery on a ’98 to 2000something Mitsubishi GDI engined car, you need to reset the ECU.

[/quote]

Goes for older ones as well. Got myself EA32 Galant from 1993 and it’s ECU loses it just the same when you disconnect the battery.
Letting it idle for a while does the trick in these too, it keeps learning for the first few hundred miles after that so might occasionally feel sluggish when you press the accelerator and so on.

ECUs them selves can also cause problems on these older ones, shouldn’t be that much of a problem when you get closer to 2000. Capacitors dry up and start manifesting all kinds of strange things. Easily replaceable by yourself if you have some soldering experience.

[Author]

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