Hello, I'm new here and in need of some advice. I have a 90' Camaro and when I put the car in park or stop at a light etc. it acts as if its going to die. The rpm's fluxuate badly and car runs very rough. The headlights will dim and so will the instrument panel. Any ideas?

 

Ran into the same problem with my 1985 Trans Am just recently. After doing some quick traces and testing heres what i came up with. Have your alternator checked. Start the car let it run and then disconnect one of the battery posts if the car dies then your altenator is going bad or is bad. The other thing, check your battery. This was the case with mine. The battery was old and weak and wasnt keeping up. Next trace back to the O2 sensor, good idea to change this anyways, pretty basic to do.
After the o2 and the battery mine ran like a champ.

 

Westman,

What is the approximate idle RPM when the engine is warm?

 

If the car idles down too low when in gear, it's common for the headlights to dim etc.

Good bet would be to tell us what motor setup you have, carb, TBI, TPI etc, and then go from there...

Best bet would be making sure the idle / minimum air is set correctly. Other areas would be to make sure the timing is set correctly, tune up parts etc.



HTH

 

thanks for the help. The o2 sensor in mine is disconnected because the headers were too long so that might be the prob. Its about 500 rpms at idle. I'm running a 5.7L 350 V8 with TBI. Just out of curiosity, when I installed the headers I left the a/c and alternator mounting bars off. Could that be a problem?

 

...And now we get the rest of the story.

Yes, that could be a problem. You need to get the oxygen sensor reconnected ASAP. Without it, the engine is running in open loop mode constantly. Without it, the engine will be running too rich, and it should be setting an error code.

You should watch the alternator with the engine running. It is probably not staying in one place, but vibrating around, allowing the belt to slip. The same goes for the AC compressor under load.

 

Well I got the O2 sensor hooked up this morning. Seems to be running worse than before. How can I hook up the mounting bars now that I have headers?