Hi my wife has a Kia Picanto se 04 which struggles with power up hills :spark plugs ,ht leads and coil pack changed, fuel injectors changed and fuel pump cleaned which had no filter. We are now at wits end as we can't afford to fix anymore or another car,i really hope you could shed some light on what the problem could be.
Help us out with some more info/symptoms. How many miles/km? Does it burn oil? Exhaust smoke, if so, grey or white? Have you done a compression test? Check engine light/fault codes? Tried hooking up a scan tool?
107700 miles doesn't burn oil and no smoke, compression test has been done and has passed and no fault codes, It starts first time and drives but when going up a small hill it struggles and stutters abit
Hi Diizzy48,
I have a Kia Picanto 2004 aswell, and I can say that I was never able to troubleshoot this problem. I've tried most of the stuff that you have mentioned above, except the compression test. The only difference is that I sometimes get a random misfire code. My car is around your mileage aswell. Check that your crankshaft position sensor and your MAP sensors are alright. On a Kia Picanto 2004, we don't have a MAF sensor, however, I would make sure that airflow is alright aswell and make sure that your air filter is clean. After changing the air filter, and cleaning the MAP sensor with an electric cleaner, it kind of improved; however, its not gone completely. I guess its just a fault with the car, as I've heard that a few other Kia Picantos also have this issue with struggling up the hill.
After changing my sparkplugs, I also watched Scotty's video on gapping your spark plugs. I reduced the gap just a tiny bit, and it gave me some extra power too. I know it burns richer, but hey, this is just a car that I use to get from point A to point B. As long as it runs right and doesn't give me a lot of expenses, I'm fine with that. If you want, I have some owner manuals and repair guide manuals for Kia Picanto 2004, which helped me with some details such as spark plug gaps. I can send them to you if you'd like.
@georgepetrov
yes please georgepetrov that would help a great deal.
Here , I uploaded them on WeTransfer as the files are too big to upload here.
I hope they help. You have all kind of useful technical information that you wont find only specifically for Kia Picanto 2004. Very useful when in doubt for something specific.
@georgepetrov
Thank you for them we had someone look at the car and by the look of it there is some bad wiring that's messed with a lot and the ecu