P0300 (war and peace version)
 

Last Saturday I decided to flush water thru my cooling system one more time. During the 30 min ride after the flush, I got a SES light and stumbling and major hesitation that seemed to be like the engine was losing fire or was running out of gas.

I had plenty of gas in the tank. When I finally made it to AutoZone, the parts guy read the code.
"P0300", he said, "you need a tune up."
"OK, ok ok, let me go read up on the code P0300 at BF, and Ill get back to you", I said.

When I got back home, I fired up BF and HOLY ****E! There are a lot of BFers with a problem just like mine.... And Im finding that no one solves the problem. Oh man, I really dont need this... I read all the good threads on P0300 and the long ones too... I was worried.

I just new mine was gonna be a hard case. Hell, I only got 49k on the odometer, so this isnt gonna be simple. So, as another member found out by happenstance, I bought a new coil and applied as much dielectric grease as I could when I installed it. No dice, still throwing that code.

Yesterday, I installed a new fuel filter in the Advance AP parking lot. Same stuff, different part. Still running like crap.

I went over to a respected auto repair place and got their advice. They ridiculed me for reading forums and told me to do a tune up. All day long today Ive been calming myself down, wondering how much was I gonna spend fixing this.....

When I got home today....

http://i51.tinypic.com/24npgqt.jpg

http://i53.tinypic.com/nqbo8o.jpg

http://i54.tinypic.com/29c724z.jpg

Very telling photos huh? They dont tell the whole story...

My neighbor walks over to say hi and introduce himself as Im taking these photos. (we just moved in 2 mos ago) We chit chat for a minute, make smalltalk and he asked me whats up with my Blazer? I bore him with the whole story, and then he hits me with this ****e.... Seems he used to be a GM master tech before retirement and he tells me to check the play in my distributor. He says replacing those distributors paid for his kids braces back in the day(he was making book rate and could turn these in about 25 minutes). He claims that maybe 90% of the P0300 codes that came to him on these Blazers were bad distributors. GM got about 200k of these things with chinese bearings and they fail like a 18 year old 9th grader fails english class.

Sure enough. My distributor shaft has a foot and a half of side to side play. Maybe a half of an inch, but it feels like a mile. Dropping a new distributor in it on thursday. Yay :P

Fantastic!!! So.. anyone with a 2001 throwing a P0300 needs to look at the distributor shaft play. Or is there a wider date range?

- BTW, how about putting your car in your CP so we dont have to look it up on old posts

But what does the distributor have to do with flushing coolant? Is there a cause/effect?

j/k

:icon_couchhide:

Im going to bet it was just coincidence. It also goes to show that sometimes when something breaks that it can get confusing when some other detail leads you on the wrong path. Not faulting this guy... i was thinking he doused the distributor or wires with coolant. Very good info though!!!

holy smokes! your rotor looks a bit carbonated/burnt there buddy. Sad to hear bout the distributor though. Lucky enough they aren't really hard to change, just expensive.

I was flushing the antifreeze because Ive had some overheating issues...

I got the distributor changed out last night. Runs like a champ now, no codes.

When you changed it, did you have to time it as well or was it a drop and go?

Im trying to learn as much as i can about distributor swapping just incase mine needs done, im not trying to take it to a shop ha ha ha

It was easy. The hardest part was getting the oil pump gear slotted thingy oriented just right. The whole job took me about 1.5 hrs and I drank two Shiner Bock's while I did it.