hey guys....

well here's the story


Last week I was drivin home from work when I saw a really sweet lookin baby blue camaro for sale on the side of the road ......I went to check it out and the guy told me it came from florida and has a rebuilt engine and transmission. The odometer only read 35K and he attributed this to the tranny swap. I took it for a drive and it was fine.....not as fast as mine but still decent. He said the EGR needed to be replaced and the O2 sensor was broken off in 2 pieces. Now my girlfriend has been looking for a car, and I thought it'd be cute for us to have matching cars lol....

By the way....it's an 89 RS with a 305 TBI

So after getting him down to 1600, we bought the car.... on the way home it was running great....great idle and acceleration. Then suddenly the RPM's started jumping, engine light went on, and it would putt when accelerating. At low RPM's it would want to stall very badly and most of the time it would. There was never any problem with it starting back up , but it would just continue to run crappy once started up again.

The next day, I went to autozone and got a new airfilter and the other filter in the aircleaner that needed to be replaced. Now the old air filter was one of the nastiest things I've ever seen. around it looked like mud in the air cleaner and I actually found acorns and a lollipop stick surrounding the air filter!!!!!!!!

So I replaced the air filter, cleaned out the air cleaner, put a new EGR valve on it, and replaced the O2 sensor.

The car ran a lot smoother and I realized that before it wasn't getting good airflow considering how nasty the aircleaner was. But sure enough, it started to be bipolar again. Sometimes it would run great and suddenly RPM's would start jolting up and down and it would putt and run like crap.

The engine light would go on almost everytime it started running crappy and it would go off after it was done being crappy. When I put the paperclip into the ALDL to read the codes, it wouldn't even flash a code 12. after taking it to numerous places, nobody had a scanner to hookup to it. One of the guys had a little tool on his keychain to hookup to the ALDL but he said it wouldn't flash any codes either. So I have no idea why the engine light was going on.

My girl's uncle and I sprayed the fuel injectors with carb cleaner while revving the engine to clean them out.....some nasty black crap came outa the exhaust pipes. But the bipolarness persisted.

So yesterday I dropped my girl off at work so I could bring the car to my house to look at it. On the way home it started putting and being worse than ever. I stalled in the middle of a busy road and everytime I would start it and shift to drive it would stall. Talk about frustrating!!! And after I pushed it into a parking lot, it wouldn't even start again.


I had it towed to my house later that day and the driver told me that when I tried starting it, the coil was sparking which is most likely my problem. So I went to autozone.....bought a new coil, plugs, wires, and fuel filter. I thought it really might be the coil because it kinda clicked when you accelerated before, and I thought it might have been a timing/ignition issue.

Today I gave it a full tuneup with a new coil, and put in the new fuel pump (oomfffffffg that was the worst job I've ever had to do......my body burns like no other). so I re-connected the battery and tried to start it......it wouldn't. so I hoped to g0d that it was just out of gas because I had lost a lot during the fuel pump swap. after putting new gas in it.....it still wouldn't start. when I turn the key, fuel is going through the injectors, but when I press on the gas, it makes no difference in trying to start it.

I checked all the fuses and nothing looks bad.

PLEEEEEAAAAAASE someone give me some advice because I'm so frustrated and you know how women are with having a car but not being able to drive it lol :-/


Thanks guys

 

hey bro sorry about your car. did you change the pick-up coil? its under the distibutar cap with two conectors going to it? and also did you ever think that it could be your cat? let me know!! hope it works.

 

oh yeah, check to see if you have any rust under the body? because florida is a nasty place to be because of all the salt and humidity. good luck

 

hey thanks for the reply ramair....

no I didn't change the pick-up coil ...I've never even heard of that before. and I never thought of the cat before either......but I dono man it sounds pretty healthy when I crank it but it just won't turn over :/

 

When you turn the key to the on position, do you hear the pump prime for 2 seconds?

Have you checked for spark at the plugs yet?

Other than that, it is possible that the ECM has gone screwy.

Where in MI are you?

 

you should try to look at your picup coil bro. Mine did the same thing only when it got hot but after awhile it wouldnt even start. it looks like a little circle with wires coming out of it. and white too. if there isnt any spark and you just change the coil i would check that. THE ECM SHOULD BE THE LAST TO CHECK!!! Im not say that ecm cant be it, could be but you need to do more test.