I have a 2001 Nissan Sentra 2.0L front wheel drive, auto and I think I have broken something.
I accidentally left the e-brake on and drove about 200 feet before I noticed. I was giving the car a lot of gas, not pedal to the metal but close.
After that the "service engine" light came on and I drove home (about 1k). A friend told me to disconnect the battery to reset the computer because driving with the ebrake may have tripped something so I did that.
The "service engine" light now does not come on but when I first start the car (starts fine) I put it in drive and press the gas and it feels like it limps along, trying to go (it moves a bit but not much).
After about 30 seconds to 1 minute of that it runs and drives fine. No knocking, stalling or anything. It's only when I start it up.
It's in a covered car park so it's not getting cold or baked in the sun either.
Things I've done:
Checked coolant - lots
checked the oil - tiny bit low so I put a quart in last night. Nothing changed this morning
reseated all the fuses
I'm not sure where to go from here and my mechanic is away for the next few days.
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The engine will run without them completely, but you will get far worse fuel mileage and rough running until the engine warms up like you are experiencing. This is because the ECU does not know how much fuel to feed the engine, and essentially just uses a baseline and guesses. What could have happened is that the sensor was close to failure, and you running the car hard like that (I am guessing you usually don't ) could have broken it. If this is the problem, the warning light will come back on after a while.
You probably don't know this, but back before the days of the ECU and emissions monitoring, all cars ran like shit when cold.
It seems to run pretty much perfectly when warm. This morning it did the issue above and just now 20 minutes ago it started and drove with no issues.
Everything you said sounds bang on so I'll see with the mechanic on wednesday. He's a good friend so labour will just be a case of beer.
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