ok so... my camaro has always been more than reliable. cranks on the first try within 1-2 seconds, etc, etc. never ever any problems. (btw, it's bone stock... daily driver, 147K miles)

so, i drove to work, car did fine as usual, got off at 6, come out. get in car. i crank and it sort of hesitates and sounds kind of odd when the engine turns over like "hisssssssss" ... so i sat there for a minute and noticed my tachometer is flipping up and down from 5000 to about 5500k and back...

so i turned it off and turned it back on and it still did the same thing, so i go to take off and it acts like it was in a big strain... i felt like i was driving a 2 cylinder. hardly any power at all. no SES light, battery/oil is fine...

i get on the road and at about 45mph my tachometer was really going wild and not being steady and not really reading accurately, and the whole car still barely had power and was violently shaking/vibrating. i had to drive it home because no one could pick me up and i had no cell phone...

was extremely difficult to even reach 65mph on the interstate and was really vibrating and sort of rocking back and forth. i made it home and i'm afraid to take it anywhere else...

what in the world is the deal?

 

Without physically seeing the car, it's kind of hard to know exactly what the problem is. But I can guarantee you that it is a distributor malfunction. Check the wiring to it. Might be cut and making bad contact, might possibly be an internal dist. problem, but hopefully not.

Electrical system could be a culprit as well, only thing I know of that kills distributor parts is a bad electrical surge, overheating and age(probably from the former two).

 

I second that it is almost certainly a distributor malfunction. Pull the cap and check everything out, make sure the connections to the module are fine (I had this exact problem and it was a loose connection to the module). if everything looks okay, have the module tested at advanced auto parts or a simular place.

 

check the battery connections. i had a wire disconnect from the battery, the car still ran but did the same thing you were describing about your car. look on the terminals and see if there are any loose wires.