austinman

Well, when I drove to work this morning my car ran just great (1989 GXL) no problems at all. When I got in my car to leave from work about 6 hours later my car was extremely hard to start and felt like it was shaking a little bit (this is the first time it has ever done this) after it finally started it immediately died and took a long time to start again. I kept the rpm's up at about 3,000 so it would not die on me, and it ran horribly for about 5 blocks and I had to park it. I changed the fuel filter thinking this might be the problem but it was not. This is very strange to me because it was perfect when I parked the car, and now it is bad. ANy help would be appreciated. The car has about 149,000 miles and I do not know it it has a rebuild on it or not.

peacekeeper

Dang dude that sux. Have you done a compression test on it? With that many miles on it its not out of the ordinary for them to just lose the apex seal. Thats what it sounds like but not to sure. Is there any warning lights in you idiot cluster? If you describe exactly whats happening we could give some better help.

peace,
Charles

austinman

the only light that came on is for about 3 seconds the check engine light came on,but that is when the rpms were very low and then that went away. It just ran with very little power and kind of like when you start a car that has been sitting for a very very long time and it idle's rough, however the rough ideling never went away.

jacobcartmill

iTrader: (6)

check a little plug behind the alternator (slightly on the passenger side) a little bit under the alternator. almost at the base of the water pump elbow where you fill up the coolant. this little sensor (formally called water thermo sensor) has been ******* up my universe and often it gets overlooked.

peacekeeper

That could do it too.

austinman

That plug could cause the car to start so bad and idle so bad with that loss of power too?

Driftmechanix

its happened to mine . one of the two prongs broke off. so i jammed a wire in it and it works fine.( i'll replace it when i get the chance). check and see if thats it.

austinman

Well, I looked for a loose plug behind the alternator and found nothing. I changed all the plugs today and had an extra upper ignition coil, and it still had the problem, so I disconnected the lower ignition coil and it did nothing different at all connected or disconnected so I imagine that this might be the problem, does this sound possible? Of course the part is about 230.00 dollars at Autozone and has to be ordered. Oh well.

jacobcartmill

iTrader: (6)

no way, dont go to autozone and buy a whole new leading coil. buy a good used one (its rare for a coil to go out)
and make sure it is really dead before you buy a new one. take out your bottom (leading) plugs with them connected to the coil (the one up by the battery) and crank the car and see if they spark plugs are firing.
some of your spark plugs could actually be dead, thats always a possibility as well. just experiment with the spark area and make sure you diagnose it correctly before you go buy a part. nothing worse than buying a *new* part that you don't need.

jacobcartmill

iTrader: (6)

yes.
but for some reason my car is backwards and with that plug connected, the car wont start (if it does start, its really rough)

Aaron Cake

iTrader: (1)

If you think the problem is the leading (or "lower") coil, then just use a spark tester.

The car will run on the trailings only, but will display the same symptoms you are having. Other possible causes are stuck injectors (rare), vacuum leaks (common), horribly clogged cats (semi-rare) and loss of compression (common? hard to say, since every engine will loose compression over time).

First eliminate ignition as a source of the problem, then do a crude compression test (search for "compression test" for info).