Ok heres my problem, my car has been acting up for months and I am not sure what to do now. the simptoms: when i come to a stop my car idles really low and then dies, in order to keep it alive i have to push it up into neutral and rev the engine,(By the way my car is a 90 3.1 V6 auto) . then pull it down and go ( very annoying). my mechanic has done a coulpe of things and narrowed it away from the fuel pump, and injectors. He also replaced the oxygen sensor thats in the tailpipe. so then I took it to the chevy dealer and they said it was the EGR valve, they said it was cracked alittle, and it would be $800 to fix, but my machanic said theres no way it could be that. So then maybe we thought it was the ECM but he had another camaro there and put it in my car and it still did it. so no my mechanic has given up and I asked a frien what he thought ( he works on race cars) and he maybe thought it was the Throttle body positioning sensor, But who knows?

Thanks for reading about my problem and if anyone know what i should maybe do THANKS A MIILION TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Well there is a very simple way to check your TPS sensor with just a multimeter. You can do a search at the top right hand corner of the board and search TPS....you'll come up with a ton of stuff from this forum and the General Tech forum.

I checked mine a while back when I was haveing a hestiation problem and took all of a couple minutes....its free, and it will eliminate one more thing from your list. What I did is took the two probes and pushed through the rubber coating so each made contact with the two lead wires....and then look at your volatage. At idle is should read 0.54Volts +/- 0.075Volts....and at WOT it should read 4.5 volts. I did mine with the engine running, i don't know if that necessary, it may also work with the key in the ON position, which would make it alot less dangerous....oops, too bad I thought about that now. Anyway thats a quick description on how to check it....good luck.

 

How did he decide it wasn't the EGR? When does this problem happen? As soon as you start driving? Does it only happen after the car is warmed up?

 

Well here's what happens, It happens radomly, sometimes it runs fine and other times it runs like $**t. My mechanic said it wasn't the EGR valve because he said it was such a small crack that it couldn't be the problem. but heres another thing, I don't know if this means anything but when it does die my radio doesn't even shut off. But it still does it with the radio off in the first place. He also said it wasn't the ECM because he had another camaro he was working on and he took the ECM out of that and put it in there and he said it still did it, ( but don't you have to be really careful when you work with those or you can screw things up?).
So i'm taking it to a guy thats a friend with my mother and see if he can fix it. Oh to answer your question sometimes it happens when its cold and other times it happens when its hot!

Thanks for all your input!!!!!

 

A sticking EGR would show a problem after the car has warmed up- and after the car has been driven at highway speeds, with a light throttle. When the car slows down, the computer will try to turn EGR off- but EGR sticks open, and the car stalls.

You could try replacing the throttle position sensor... keep in mind that yours is a self-adjusting TPS, so you don't have to adjust it (like us 85-89 guys do).

The radio should stay on when the car dies because your ignition key is in the "run" position, meaning, the radio is still getting power. If you were turning the key to "off" to make the motor stall, then, your radio wouldn't work. I think the radio is alright.

Tell your mech- er, wait, no, do this yourself- Bypass the EGR. Fashion a block-off plate where the EGR tube meets the throttle body. This way, the computer will still engage EGR, so you won't get an error code. (If you unhook electrical wires, you'll get an error code.) But, no exhaust gas will be able to enter your throttle body. If the car's fine after the block-off plate, you know it's EGR.