Is My Starlet Dying?

[GAVO]

Is my Starlet dying?

Firstly it definetly has an oil leak, which I don't know how to fix or how much it would cost.

Secondly, it loses power for split seconds at a time although never cuts out as such. Is this because of the oil leak dirtying the engine or something?

Thirdly, I think the CV joint is gone as I can hear a knocking sound.

My timing belt sounds about dead too!

Are any of these problems related?

Can anyone tell me how to go about fixing the oil leak?, if the oil leak could be responsible for the slight little losses of power to the engine while driving(like it's missing a spark), and how to fix this? And indeed how exactly to clean out all the leaked oil etc from under the hood?

On the plus side there are new tyres, breaks, plug leads and it has had a basic service quite recently.

Can anyone answer these questions? Please?

[pscrawn]

find the oil leak and see where its coming from first! (might be worth steam cleaning the engine to make this easier) if its the head gasket its gonna be pricy at a garage, the cutting out sounds like an electrical fault somewhere in the spark system like the distributor etc, depends what starlet you have but could be a fueling problem too (although i think this is less likely) as for the knocking sound i have something similar on my EP71 starlet and i have worked it down to being play in the joint from the steering rack to the left hand steering arm, gonna need a new bush or a new steering rack. i think the best thing you can do is find a good independant garage, just 1 guy or something, and get the problems identified that way at least you know what you gotta do to fix it, don't think it'll die on you though sounds fixable

cheers Phil

[CozmoNz]

find the oil leak and see where its coming from first! (might be worth steam cleaning the engine to make this easier) if its the head gasket its gonna be pricy at a garage, the cutting out sounds like an electrical fault somewhere in the spark system like the distributor etc, depends what starlet you have but could be a fueling problem too (although i think this is less likely) as for the knocking sound i have something similar on my EP71 starlet and i have worked it down to being play in the joint from the steering rack to the left hand steering arm, gonna need a new bush or a new steering rack. i think the best thing you can do is find a good independant garage, just 1 guy or something, and get the problems identified that way at least you know what you gotta do to fix it, don't think it'll die on you though sounds fixable

cheers Phil

could be very pricy.

do you know any *mechanic mates* or anything that can check your car out for free?

some bigger places do free checks. Try to ring them into doing a huge one on your engine for $0 :)

[GAVO]

Thanks for the comments, suggestions and ideas. So I'm off to the steam cleaners and we'll take it from there!