I am having a strange problem with my car that if any one has any ideas on what the problem could be or has had this sort of problem please help me.

First off my car is an 88 Pontiac Firebird with the TBI 305 and auto transmission has about 130,000 miles on it and I have an open element air cleaner, MSD coil and wires, Jet stage 2 chip, and AIR delete with the rest pretty much stock.

Problem is that the car suddenly starts to sputter erratically and dies but once the car has died there are no problems restarting it, it just fires right up.

Problem occurs when I move the selector on my air conditioning panel to any position other than OFF position. Max, vent, defrost it does not matter and there is no set time for the car to start acting goofy it may do it as soon as I move the selector or it may decide to wait for about 10 to 15 min and it does it when hot or cold. But if I can see the car start to act funny and move the selector to the OFF position the problem stops and the car starts to act normal again.

Personally it seems to me to be ignition or electrical related because when the problem occurs the tachometer needle starts to jump all over the place erratically like the car is firing sometimes and not at others, then if left to itself will eventually cause the car to die.

 

Sounds like a vaccum leak to me. One of the lines might might have been burnt, nicked, pinched, etc... I'd start with the one that comes from the engine bay (if its anything like my IROC) thats bundled up with all of the HVAC wires. Its a little, about an 1/4 in. black tube that carries the vaccum for the HVAC controls.

Hope that helps. Good luck anyhow.

 

Well I pluged off every thing that uses a vaccum except the AC controls, EGR, and MAP sensor the problem still occurs. It seems to happen too fast to be a vaccum leak. The car will run mint untill it starts to cut out and this can happen at hiway speeds or at idle and the problem dissapears once I turn off the AC controls so I think it may have some thing to do with the AC fan taxing my electrical system too much causing the ignition not to operate properly.