A few months back i took my protege in to get a leaky radiator hose fixed, and basically the guy charged me $200 to put a new hose in with radiator sealant (which ended up plugging up my heater core and blowing the hose up again 3 months later (a few weeks ago). So I took the car back to him and he told me that antifreeze was spraying over wires and corroding a lot of things, so he flushed my radiator and put yet another hose on (this time without the sealant).

He basically then said my fix wasn't permanent and that a cylinder was misfiring. Then he said I needed a full tune up, a new heater core, a new air-intake nozzle, and possibly a new spark plug, but that it was all going to cost me $500. So, i never ended up getting it done.

Now I drove it for awhile after that without much troubles but i noticed the car has progressively started to shift worse and worse. Now I cant bring the car to 45 without hitting 4500rpms, or 55mph without hitting 5500rpms. I thought i needed some more transmission fluid in my car but after adding a few hundred ml, it hasnt helped my situation. What could I do myself to fix the car? I don't know what to do about the sparkplugs, as I dont know where they are in my car or what Id need to do to replace it.

I'm not very car-savvy but I did install my own breakpads/rotors a few months ago with great success. Those crazies at the breakshop wanted to charge me $600 for half an hour's work. Did it myself in an hour with no experience and it only cost me $60 for the rotors/breakpads.

 

stick shift or auto?

 

auto, sorry about that

 

whats your tranny fluid level at?

 

i think i might have 100ml too much in there, but otherwise im pretty sure its in between the markers like it should be. if its not how do i drain out fluid w/o syphoning?

im pretty sure my tranny fluid isnt what's causing the problem though

 

That is a pretty high rpm for that speed unless the trans is not upshifting into 4th. Are you getting a 1-2,
2-3, and 3-4 shift or is it not going into fourth gear. You will know you are in fourth if you are cruising at freeway speed and push the HOLD button. If rpms increase quite a bit you were in fourth. If no rpm increase then you are still in third gear.