I have a 1989 Toyota Camery and it’s trying very hard to die on me. Lately I’ve had it tuned up, fixed breaks, fixed axils, fixed the timing belt when it blew, and all the other little maintenance stuff that they recomended (something to do with the fuel line and replacing all the various fluids). But it still drowns. When it’s raining or very humid out, my car will stall out at intersections (when I try to step on the gas it dies). It also pulled a new trick the other day, I was driving down the road and suddenly the gas pedal wasn’t working so I was just coasting…then it started working again. But it only happens in the rain.
Why does my car drown? Can I get this fixed this at all?
Have you had a tune-up done on the engine? From what you describe, it sounds like the secondary ignition system is sensitive to moisture.
If it hasn’t been done, replace the distributor cap, rotor, sparkplugs, and sparkplug wires and see if doing this fixes the problem. If not, then have the ignition coil tested to see if it’s within spec.
Tester
The distributor cap, rotor, spark plugs, and spark wires have all been changed, but no one’s mentioned the ignition coil yet. Today they just adjusted the idle and said to see if that worked (at least they didn’t charge me?).
There is no idle adjustment on your engine because it’s fuel injected, and the idle is controlled by the computer.
What they did was adjust the throttle stop screw which is not the correct thing to do. They need to find out why the engine stalls under these conditions. Only someone who is a hack as a mechanic would try to fix the problem by adjusting the throttle stop screw.
Tester
Which is why I like checking with people who actually know what they’re doing once in a while…Thanks!