Hello, I have a 93 Cavalier, which has been real good to me for a long time but in the past few months has really been a burden on me. It seems like everything happened at once. It was losing coolant last year and I noticed that is was dripping out of the weeping hole in the water valve. I changed that without any problems and it seems to work fine for about a month and then it started losing it again. The oil was always fine and not milky, but I had the head gasket replaced anyway because the spark plugs were fouling out and it totally fixed the problem. No more leaking coolant.
Just before I decided to replace the head gasket, though, my car started to stall out on me when I come up to a stop, but only after I have driven it for a while. So the head gasket did not cure that particular problem and I checked all of the hoses and found that the pcv hose was dry rotted as well as a hose coming from my transmission, which I don’t honestly know what it is. It connects to a metal tube that is welded into place and connects to nothing but open air.
Anyway, the car was running like a champ for several weeks and stalled out again. I lifted the hood and saw the hose from the transmission slipped a little, so I pushed it back on and later clamped it down with a much tighter hose clamp and it has been running like a champ again for a few weeks…until a few days ago.
While I was driving home the other day I was exiting the highway and it started to stall out. Fortunately I had a green light suddenly appear so I could hit the accelerator before it died on me and from there on I had all green lights, which had never happened ever for me before…anyway, I got to the turn I needed to make to get into my apartment complex and as I slowed it started to stall again. Immediately after the turn I hit the gas again and started to climb the hill but it was going about 10mph and knocking around as if it were going to die on me the whole way, then suddenly I turned the corner onto a flat road and it choked a little then felt like it shifted gears and corrected itself. As I was pulling into my apartment’s parking lot I slowed down to 5mph and pulled into my parking spot, as it was running just as smooth as it ever was and it didn’t stall.
My car is not giving any unusual codes, it just blinks 1-2, 1-2, 1-2 over and over which means no problems. When I was troubleshooting after my head gasket I check with a voltmeter all of the valves and disconnected everything one at a time and they all seem to be functioning normal and getting the appropriate voltage. There is one obvious problem that occurred when I last replaced my spark plugs a few months ago. It seems like the 4th plug hole’s threads are stripped out so it does not seal tight, but it is still snug. I wrapped some Teflon tape around the plug to help it seal better.
I appreciate any help I can get! Thanks in advance!