ThurgoodJenkins

My mom has a 96 I30 w/ about 100k miles on the clock. Well recently, it would randomly die at low rpms like at stop lights and such. It never gave her a check engine light. She took it to the dealership and they said they could not find anything wrong w/ the car. So she gets it back and it does the same thing, just more often. She takes it back to the dealership and they supposedly put two master technicians on it to solve the problem but once again, they couldn't find anything wrong. Their guess was it was a bad coil pack but since they couldn't pinpoint which one it was, she'd have to pay $800 to replace them all

Well she just got fed up of it and bought a brand new I30 and gave me the 96 for my daily driver (my other car is a 98 Z28). Well I'm stumped as what this could be. They cleaned the injectors, said the fuel pump was fine. I'm going to replace the fuel filter tomorrow and see if that does it.

Here are the symptoms:
-Dies at low rpms
-Raw fuel smell sometimes when it dies
-Mom says she sees white smoke come out of the exhaust at times (coolant, oil?)

I thought it may be O2 sensors but won't those give you a CEL? Also, if it dies at a light and I start it back up and put it in neutral and rev it to 1000+ until it turns green, its fine.

Sorry for so much info, but I'm stumped and supposedly all of the local service department is to. Thanks in advance.

DJ E-Bam

iTrader: (1)

White smoke!!! Could be oil burning!!! May be a blown head gasket...

Definatly not an ingition coil pack problem...you'll get a CEL.

Also...you may have no CEL...but you should try pulling the codes from the ECU and see what you get.

njmaxseltd

iTrader: (19)

Clean the throttle body - www.motorvate.ca
And replace the engine coolant temp sensor.

ThurgoodJenkins

Ok thanks.

ThurgoodJenkins

Ok I changed the fuel filter and cleaned the TB although it wasn't dirty at all. I was surprised how easy this car is to work on. I had everything done and back together in about 20 minutes. And while the air box and maf was off, I was thinking about different ghetto intake mods =)

And I located the coolant temp sensor. It's on the forward most head on the drivers side. Very easy to get to.

ThurgoodJenkins

I drove it around tonight and it started acting up about an hour into the drive. It would idle real low (300rpm or so) then jump to 1200rpm, all while my foot was off the gas. Then I'd put my foot on the gas and it'd stumble, then pick up and drive normal.

It was wierd because with my foot off the gas, the idle would jump from really low to really high. It actually shifted into 2nd gear while I was idling at 1200rpm or so.

Any ideas?

DJ E-Bam

iTrader: (1)

One of the guys on my forums, NWMaxima.com...., had this problem and he had to have his tranny replaced.

ThurgoodJenkins

That was my initial thought, that the tranny was going out, but I don't see how that's tied into the strong gas smell and white smoke. How many miles were on his?

DJ E-Bam

iTrader: (1)

True...the smoke and smell wouldn't have anything to do with the tranny, but the other problems do.

I'm stumpped unless I'm actually in front of the car.