I need some help from the garage gurus please. I drive a '97 Camaro. This morning when I got on the highway the car didn't want to accelerate at all. It started sputtering like I was out of gas. I have 3/4 of a tank so that wasn't the issue. As I drove it more I figured out that it acts ok if you give it almost no gas at all. I can change gears just fine so I don't think it's a transmission problem. but if I give it more than just a small amount of gas it starts doing this bucking thing. My 0-40 time was about 30 seconds this morning and when I was going up any sort of incline at all I was unable to give it enough gas to keep it above 60 mph. Anybody got any ideas about what the problem could be? My first thought was bad gas or maybe some rainwater got in somehow, but I don't know how likely that would be.

4/12/2007 9:35:21 AM

6500, nice.

Sounds like a misfire maybe?

Squirrel caught in the air intake?

4/12/2007 9:43:17 AM

you gots a bad coil or a coupla bad plug wires...or both.

I'll bet a cheeseburger on it.

4/12/2007 9:48:08 AM

^agreed,

I had a wire pop off back in the day and made it run like shit and couldnt accel.

4/12/2007 9:53:03 AM

i had this problem on a van of mine. its a pain to figure out

i changed the plugs, wires, distributor cap, cat. converter, and set the timing= nothing


turns out the fuel pump uptake tube had a hole in it, so the gas was seeping back into the tank.

more gas i gave, the less power i had, and it would "burp" a lot.


i would check your fuel pressure first

4/12/2007 10:53:06 AM

^ I experienced similar issues on a bad fuel pump.

4/12/2007 11:38:23 AM

Well, as luck has it (or doesn't), Chevy is famous for fuel pump failure.

Checking the fuel pressure on anything GM is a piece of cake, as the fuel rails all have Schrader fittings, and damn near all fuel pressure gages made for injection have the Schrader type connector to screw on it. If you either have a test gage or know somebody who does, then yeah, sounds like the first thing to do.

Lemme ask you this: while the car is idling, do you get a "chuff chuff chuff" sound from the exhaust pipe? Prime indicator of a missing cylinder or two. The cylinder's charge passes unburned into the exhaust, where it ignites. That's where the sound comes from.

4/12/2007 11:50:58 AM

Update: I drove it to lunch and it was acting just fine. No issues at all. I didn't get on it too hard, but it accelerated to 40 or so with no noticeable sluggishness.

I didn't notice anything weird sounding when it was idling. But I'm pretty bad about noticing shit. Or doing preventative maintenance. Or really anything with my car. I should do better, I know. Anyone have any advice about what, if anything, I should change out to prevent this from happening in the future. I'm not opposed to spending a few hundred on new plugs or a fuel pump or hoses or whatever. It probably needs a bunch of new shit anyway. Aside from oil changes most of the shit on the car is probably the same shit that came on it 10 years ago. With the notable exception of the alternator, battery, serpentine belt, and tensioner pulley.

4/12/2007 12:03:31 PM

Quote :

"Chevy is famous for fuel pump failure."

ain't that the truth!

4/12/2007 1:11:09 PM

Quote :

"With the notable exception of the alternator, battery, serpentine belt, and tensioner pulley."

These are not notable exceptions. These are expected exceptions.

4/12/2007 1:13:58 PM

it's notable only in that those are the ONLY things that I've replaced on the car. I assume there's a lot more stuff that needs to be changed out. Any advice as to where I should start replacing stuff?

coil, plug wires, plugs, fuel pump, hoses?

any or all of the above? something else?

4/12/2007 1:32:45 PM

why don't you check the codes before you go about replacing stuff?

4/12/2007 1:38:14 PM

Just start with the plugs. Easiest (well, maybe not) and cheapest.

Of course, you could go and look under your hood while the engine is running at night and see if you see any arcing over the plug wires.

The only other easy way to check for a regular misfire that I can tell you is have somebody read your error codes. It's OBDII and should store a regular misfire (intermittent, maybe not).

I'm assuming you have the LS1...or do you have the 3800?

[Edited on April 12, 2007 at 1:39 PM. Reason : assume...]

4/12/2007 1:39:03 PM

It's just the 3.8L. And if it's not obvious by this point, I'm not exactly a car guy. So, while the obvious first step to most people would be to check the codes, that's not something I would think to do (or know how to do for that matter) But I do appreciate all the free advice. My roommate knows a ton more than I do and he said he'd help me look this weekend, but I just feel bad constantly using him as my personal mechanic.

4/12/2007 1:48:54 PM

unfortunately you have an obd-ii vehicle so you need a diagnostic tool to check the fault codes. if you had an older vehicle with obd-i, you would've been able to simply use a paperclip and check the codes yourself for free. atleast, i don't think you can use the paper clip trick for obd-ii vehicles.

as for your roommate, just buy him some beer.

btw, you need to correct the grammar in your status. "your you're dumb".

[Edited on April 12, 2007 at 2:10 PM. Reason : ]

4/12/2007 2:06:51 PM

Update: When I was driving home it started acting up again. This time instead of doing the shuddering thing, it full on acted like it was gonna stall if I gave it too much gas. I made it home and my roommate took a look. We decided to go to the Advance auto to check it out. on the way over there it was acting fine for the first 10 minutes or so and then when we pulled on the highway and accelerated to 50ish the shuddering started up again. My roommate was driving and instead of getting off the gas like I had been doing all day he stayed on it and there was a distinct sound of metal grinding for a spurt of about 2-3 seconds followed immediately by the check engine light coming on. We were already closer to the Advance than we were home so we decided to limp in to the store. We had the guy check the codes with the machine and he said it was a misfire in one of my cylinders. He and my roommate decided the metal sound was perhaps the spark plug exploding (?) Anyway I bought new wires, plugs, a fuel filter and some other stuff and drove home with no incident (still unable to accelerate strongly at all). I don't have work tomorrow so I'm gonna mess with it then. but hopefully that will fix the issue. We'll see.

4/12/2007 11:55:49 PM

spark plugs dont explode

buy a haynes manual before you start screwing with stuff you dont know about, will give you good ideas as far as labeling the plug wires and only changing one at a time so you dont confuse them.

4/13/2007 12:18:24 AM

Quote :

"there was a distinct sound of metal grinding for a spurt of abou t 2-3 seconds "

That cant be good.

4/13/2007 1:13:58 PM

it sounds like it only does it once the engine gets to operating temp. i'll take zxappeal up on that cheeseburger bet and go with the cat. converter. chevy has been plagued with c/c problems on the V6.

4/13/2007 4:50:59 PM

Quote :

"it sounds like it only does it once the engine gets to operating temp."

yup. all 3 times it's done it now has been after roughly 10 minutes of driving time.

I thought about this last night (here comes the dumbass part of the story)

Ever since I moved into the house I'm in now about a year ago the bottom of the car scrapes when I go out of the driveway with a passenger in the car. It scrapes right about where (I think) the cc is. I wouldn't be surprised if I've damaged it/rubbed a hole in it somehow. I didn't even think about that until we were coming back from the auto parts store last night since leaving my house with a passenger is a fairly rare occurrence.

4/13/2007 6:07:59 PM

bob's or henry's muffler

4/14/2007 8:32:51 AM

Just for the record, zxappeal owes underPSI a cheeseburger. It ended up being a bad cat.

4/25/2007 9:43:42 AM

Brian, name your poison. I'll be in Raleigh this weekend, though I don't know what my schedule will be...

4/25/2007 9:46:30 AM

aww this thread is cute(no homo)

4/25/2007 9:51:40 AM

cheeburger cheeburger FTW

4/25/2007 11:33:57 AM

wish i had read this thread sooner. coulda told you it was a cat problem. did the same thing on my jetta when one of my sensors got ruined last year.

4/25/2007 11:59:26 AM

left the parking brake on?

4/25/2007 1:10:30 PM

Quote :

"cheeburger cheeburger FTW"

4/25/2007 3:26:05 PM

cheeburger cheeburger is closed closed I beleive, both in apex and on wake forest

4/25/2007 4:37:27 PM

well fuck me in the fucking ass. last i heard the brier creek location was still open.

4/26/2007 7:02:49 AM