Cincy94Max

I will put everything that has been happening to my car in chronological order so it is easier to diagnose the problem. A couple weeks ago I noticed my car to begin to surge at times. I would be driving around and around 2-3k RPM the car would just take off even though I hadn't depressed the gas pedal anymore. The acceleration wasn't super quick, just a small surge here and there. A couple days later I was messing around in the engine bay, and I accidently stripped the wires from my dropping resistor. The transmission shifted as hard as possible until I got a new dropping resistor from Matt93SE. His dropping resistor was from a 92 GXE, mine is a 94 GXE. I doubt the parts are different, buy you never know. Anyways, that seemed to fix the hard shifts, but occasionally the car would refuse to shift into 3rd, usually when I just started driving it. Now the car has gone totally nuts. When I am in D, R, 2, or 1 and the car is stopped, the RPMs drop repeatedly from around 800 to 500 and then back up. The RPM's keep jumping back and forth like this in rapid succession. The whole car rocks back and forth and it seems like the engine is barely able to keep running. The car only does this when it is at a complete stop and it doesn't do it in Park. Today, the engine turned completely off when I put it in Drive. I recently sprayed my engine bay down with water because it was extremely dirty, and I don't know if this could be the cause of my problems. Maybe some water got where it wasn't supposed to? Please help, does anyone know what is wrong with my car?

Chris91SE

iTrader: (1)

something is probably wet. check your distributor first and then check all other electrical components (injector harnesses etc.)

how many miles are on the car and when was the last time you did a tuneup?

Cincy94Max

136,600 miles now. Last tune up was at 84,000 miles. I checked the distributor, I will go ahead and check the other electrical components. The car seems ok in neutral and park at around 1000 RPM's, when it gets below that the engine stumbles and dies.

Cincy94Max

I went out to check for water in the electrical system and after checking everything, I started the car up. The car starts up fine and idles in park just fine. I revved the engine in park a couple times after letting the engine warm up and the RPM's settled at 900 RPM with no throttle being applied. I then shifted into reverse, and the engine just died. I tried this again and again with all of the gears. Only neutral and park keep the engine running. This would lead me to suspect something with the transmission, since the engine only dies when the transmission tries to go into a gear. The need for a new transmission wouldn't surprise me much because the transmission does have 136,000 miles on it and is one of the famed 3rd gen trannys. Can anyone think of any other possibility besides a failing transmission?

emax02

iTrader: (1)

A bad tranny should not make your car stall. The car just won't move. Your problem kinda sounds like you have a vacume leak or maybe your MAF sensor is bad. Buy a Chilton's or Haynes repair manual, in there you will find the proper procedures for checking your sensors.