I have a 95 Chevy lumina with about 150,000 miles on it. I recently had another new compressor put in it for the AC not working. I say that because I don’t know if that and this are related.
A few times now over the past month when I have been driving along the car will lose its abilily to go forward. It doesn’t stall, I just press and press on the gas and it continues to decelerate and get slower and slower until I pull over. This AM when it happened it took a good 6 -8 tries before it would stay started and actually go. It would just start and then die or start and I could rev it up to 2 RPM’s and then it would just quietly die again.
This also has happened when I am at a red light, it will die. Or if I am in park for too long without turning the car off it will die. Or if I am at a drive thru window for too long, it will die.
Any ideas why? And are they expensive to fix?
The past two times I got gas I put in high test and I also put in a can of fuel injector cleaner.
Please help, I am pretty much clueless.
What conclusion should I come to considering you have not include where your car sits in regards to maintiance,that it is off schedule?
Oh Sorry. I honestly don’t know. I bought it from my mechanic, he said it was his son’s car. Which was a plus in my opinion. He did not have maintance paperwork but said that they had taken care of it. The only thing he did say specifically was that it got new head gaskets within the past year. Since I bought it 5 months ago I have had its oil changed twice, but have done nothing else. When I bought the car from the mechanic it goes through their “inspection” and they make sure that all the fluids are full and clean, and that its running well.
So unfortunately, I can’t say what it has been for sure. I can only tell you what my mechanic told me with no written proof. The colors of all the fluids looked fine when I checked them. But, as an aside, I know nothing about cars other than how to drive them, how to check the oil and transmission fluid.
Thanks - Chrissy
The problem could be a maintiance issue,a fuel filter that has come apart and is partially blocking flow,a issue related to the headgasket work (this is bad the car needed headgaskets as you don’t know how long the car was driven needing the gaskets or if the car was seriously overheated) of a simple cleaning issue in the idle control circuit.
What I would start with is a in depth underhood inspection looking for something not connected correctly,but then you don’t know what something not correctly connected would look like.
I am not going to tell you the standard “put plugs and wires on it” but I would inspect the air intake (and filter) making sure this path is clear and put a fuel filter on it. Have someone inspect the idle control circuit.
Really I want the car looked at professionaly with a strategy involved to fix it right the first time.
Is the high test gas and fuel injector cleaner worth putting in?
I am annoyed (and embaressed) at having to take the car back to the same mechanic I bought it from. Before I take it, since it was scary dying on Interstate-95 this morning, and last time it happened I had my son in the car, what do you think something like what you stated above would cost? I live in CT if that makes a difference.
Definitely no benifit from the high test gas and 99% certain no benifit from the fuel injector cleaner (I did leave a little room).
Agree to pay a mechanic 1 hr to come up with a diagnosis. I would go back to the same mechanic as he knows if there were any corners cut doing the headgaskets (this could take a fresh mechanic hours to find some kind of built in problem).
Because the car is running so poorly you need to have a second vehicle follow and make this transport durning off-peak hours. A phone call to the original mechanic may be in order,perhaps he wants nothing further to do with the car. You don’t want to force him to work on the car,nothing good comes from this.