OK, I'll try to be brief...

The car has been sitting in a garage for five years in Michigan. It had been driven on salted winter roads. Everything is prettty rusty/corroded underneath. I'm a good wrench but not the greatest mechanic. By that I mean theres very little I can't replace and I wont replace it without proving its bad but I'm not the greatest when it comes to diagnostics.

In the past week I've replaced the fuel pump, fuel filter, oil, oil filter, air, filter, spark plugs, wires, cap, rotor, pcv, O2, belt, starter, battery, and the alternator. I've also sprayed out the throttle body, checked timing (it's at zero best I can tell), cleaned the grounds and topped off the tank with chevron fuel system cleaner and fresh gas. (not to mention what needed to be done to the brakes) Fuel spray from the injectors LOOKS to be a nice fine mist.

I've since had the car out and it seams to run decent, not great, but decent. I took it out onto the expressway and pulled it down into 2nd a few times for 20-30 seconds at a time in an effort to get some heat in the cylinders and get the injector cleaner run through everything. It might have a total of 10 miles on it now.

Here's the problem...

It simply wont idle right. In park it seems to idle ok for awhile but eventual stalls. In gear it'll stall almost immediatly if you're not on the throttle. It only makes about 17 inches of vacuum which seems low to me. The gas tank seems to build pressure. When I dropped the axle to swap the fuel pump, I forgot to pull the fuel line off the odd little white plastic thing that I can only assume is a vent or check valve and ended up sepparating the two halves. It didnt seem to be missing anything so I just popped it back together. I suppose it could be screwed up. I'm "pretty" confident that I hooked all four fuel lines up correctly but it is possible that two got crossed. I unplugged the TPS and when I whacked the throttle it had a horrible bog as I'd expect. I unplugged the IAC and nothing changed, I had kind of expected some change. I sprayed WD-40 on as many potential vac /intake leaks as I could and found nothing of note. It hadn't set any codes other than the usual 12 until I uplugged the "Timing Connector" (at least I assume that was what I unlugged, tan with black stripe, near passenger strut tower). After I checked timing it set a code 22, TPS. Not sure if this is normal but I have the factory service manual and it says that it will set a code (be nice if it said WHICH code). The car has no converter and some kind of afermarket turbo mufler.

The water pump is beyond shot and is next on the list before flushing the cooling system and driving the wheels off this thing...if I could just get it to run right.

I'm sure I'm forgeting a few things as I've been screwing with this damn thing for over a week straight and its now 12:30 am.

So much for being brief, huh?

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

So no body has any idea on this one? Or you guys just don't reply to the newbies?

 

Welcome to TGO!

{ok, that got the newbie part out of the way - have to have a bit of patience here, most folks don't answer unless they have a good one, and we all have jobs, wives, children, g/f's, honey-do lists, pets, and our own projects - sometimes it takes a few days to get good responses}

Now - I'm no expert for sure, so I won't be much help. But, things that come to mind:

1) plug wires - I know you replaced, but new dosen't mean good - for fun, test continuity on each one at a time just to make sure they are all good wires.

2) You mentioned rust - look inside the dist, check the pickup coil and the Ignition Control Module (ICM) - the ICM's will go bad, but they also can get a rust buildup on them - check it, and make sure you dab some dielectric grease on it.

3) Battery/Alternator - make sure battery is fully charged and alternator is doing it's thing - advance/autozone/oreilly's will test for free in the car

4) Vacuum - sounds good to me - wish I was getting that much!

5) What year? What motor size? What type of induction, TBI or TPI? (might be answered already given the TPS and IAC, I know TBI has these, but I'm not familiar with TPI) I'm assuming TBI since you stated the injectors seem to spray well (easy to see them on TBI)

Again - welcome aboard! I'm sure someone here can help point you in the right direction - this is the largest 3rd gen F-body website in the world!

 

Thanks for the help. Sorry if I was being impatient. Its my girlfriends car and she got into an accident with her sebring so I'm under the gun to get this one going so she has wheels.

Its a 90 RS with a TBI 305. Since my last post I've checked out the IAC using my fluke, the GM IAC driver box and the noid lights, checks out good. I also rechecked all the plug wiring to make sure I wasnt chasing my own ef up, they're right. I rechecked fuel pressure, still 11 psi. Lastly I headed up to the pick a part junk yard and scamed up a couple injectors out of an old pick up (could have been a 305 or a 350, I have no clue, part number is diffeent) for 7 bucks a piece just to see if it made a change. It actually seemed to...until i tore the gasket trying to swap the old ones back in to A, B, A test them. And of course it happened at 10:05pm so I couldnt get a new gasket. I'm debating just getting the whole rebuild kit in the morning and going completely through the TB.

As for the suggestions:

I suppose plug wires could be bad out of the box. I did pull each one off the cap individually to see that it made a change, they all made the rough idle worse.

And the module, I was under the impression that if it was bad you'd simply get no spark? Also I though it was essentially a sealed unit? What should I clean/ put dielectric grease on?

The battery and Alternator are brand new and seem to be doing their jobs quite well. 14. 5 volts at idle last I checked.

I'm getting to the point that I'm considering throwing the towel and limping it to a shop. This one may just be a lost cause.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd really appreciate it.

 

It's not really sealed - granyed water doesn't usually find it's way into the dist cap, but moisture sure does. A bad ICM can cause all kinds of issues. I had one go bad from heat - when it got hot it would just die and not restart - 30 minutes later everything would cool down and she'd crank right up like nothing was wrong, run for 20 minutes, and repeat - the ICM was breaking down from heat.

The bottoms (I think) is a metal plate that can get rusty from moisture and needs greased with dielectric grease - all new ones come with a packet of grease for this.

Like I said, no expert here - but it's something to look at. I think a new one is like $30 maybe? They can be tested I understand - I never bothered for a $30 part though.

I completely understand the g/f and under the gun - wait until you get married one day - the pressure becomes 10 fold! Good Luck!

 

Not all of us have wives and g/f's and I never plan to. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Besides, my kids would probably disown me and I'd have to shoot myself.

Have you thought about trotting back out to junkyard and grabbing an EGR and IAC valve just for the hell of it? As cheap as they are it couldn't hurt. I know someone who went through most of what you are going through and it turned out to be a stuck IAC. Unplugging it did nothing.

See if the EGR system is screwed up. Take it out and examine it for carbon. Unhook it as well and see if anything happens. Perhaps it's letting gasses back in?

Also, sometimes a vacuum leak can actually cause it to idle too high and since you have the opposite problem.... Stuck IAC... EGR... Try it since there's not much left to do.

 

Well, most of us aren't lucky enough to be without some kind of significant other. Just think, no significant other means 1/2 the food expense, 1/2 the clothing allowance, 1/2 the toiletries .... Wow! All that extra cash for car parts!

Anyone know a good divorce lawyer?

 

I've been married for a long time and have two kids.

Strangely enough, my daughter and I are the only mechanically inclined people in the family. My son would go after a bolt stretcher... Actually I described it to him one time and he thought I was serious. lol

 

Have you checked out this stuff yet? https://www.thirdgen.org/tpimod2 Also if you do a search in the TBI forum there's a good thread about cleaning your IAC so it works right. Good luck and have fun Oh, and injectors from a 350 not going to do well

 

Thanks for all the advice guys.

As for the old lady? Been together for years...to many to count so I know that whole married feeling, just dont have the paper work. Oddly enough, its her call to NOT get married! If you believe that.

Well I figured it out. You were close Camaro newbie, very close.

I decide to look a little closer to the distributer and when I grabbed the shield around the Mag pick up the pole pieces fell out. Two had broken off and were just kind of floating around in there. It all looked completely normal at a glance. Once i pulled the shaft out of the distributor I found that the pieces rattling around in there had taken out half the magnets too. Stabbed a new distributor and it runs like a champ!

Of course she gets her Sebring back tomorrow...DOH!!!

Oh well. Thanks again Y'all!!

 

That's odd.