[hopeless4life]

Thank you brooster42, I am merely suggesting that checking it for compression is much easier than having it towed somewhere or finding a friend with a scan tool. People in this forum are looking for suggestions not to be told, go get the codes pulled, yes in a perfect world everyone could afford to take their car and have it fixed but this is the real world, people do things themselves even if those of us with experience don't reccommend it. And no codes don't ALWAYS point to the fault they can point to a fault in backwards ways etc. An example would be a sunfire was towed in, car made loud noises then quit. We had codes for EVERYTHING, yes it told us something was fucked but some of the codes were caused by the fact that the valve shattered the piston after the spring broke and thus blew metal out the intake, which caused codes for everything including the IAT. Now yes they were caused by the engine going but in a very odd way. it took us longer getting these codes than it took us to do the compression test. But yes if the symptoms aren't clear then you should go to a scan tool, but if they are clear any good mechanic should be able to figure out the problem.